US Airways Pilot Makes Textbook Emergency Landing on Hudson River

UPDATED: A US Airways A320 flight taking off from LaGuardia airport encountered a bird strike which apparently disabled both engines.

UPDATE 2: "

When you have got nowhere else to go ... you've only got one go at it and it looks like he did it remarkably well.

UPDATE: The flight log tracking indicates that the aircraft encountered trouble at 3:27PM NYC Time while at 3200 feet. At 3:31pm the pilot had the aircraft down to less than 300 feet as he eased the aircraft onto the surface of the water. British aviation expert James Ferguson told the BBC he had never seen anything like it.

"If you hit water fairly hard, as you will do with an aircraft, it tends to break up. But this aircraft seems to be virtually undamaged,"

Mr Ferguson said. British Airways pilot Eric Moody told Sky News in England that the landing was a "textbook ditching".

"That very rarely happens, unless you are near a runway. Whoever has flown that has done a really good job,"

Mr Moody said. News reports from numerous sources indicate the pilot made a perfect landing on the River which kept the aircraft from breaking up. A US Airways plane crashed into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after striking a bird that disabled two engines, sending 150 on board scrambling onto rescue boats, authorities say. No deaths or serious injuries were immediately reported. Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown says the US Airways Flight 1549 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport en-route to Charlotte, N.C., when the crash occurred in the river near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan. Brown says the plane, an Airbus 320, appears to have hit one or more birds. Further reports from the scene suggest that all 150 people on-board have survived. Rescue operations are still in progress as the aircraft slowly sinks into the river.