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I’m Dying! And I Didn’t Make the Bed!
The Passengers of Flight 1549 Believed They Were About to Die. What Were Their Last Thoughts?
Eleven years ago, on January 15, 2009, Flight 1549 took off for Charlotte, North Carolina and, three minutes later, made an emergency landing in the Hudson River, with no serious harm to anyone but the geese who caused the problem. (They were liquefied into something called, in aviation jargon, snarge.)
Miracle on the Hudson, the book about this incident by William Prochnau and Laura Parker, focuses not on the uber-competence of Pilot “Sully” Sullenberger, but on the reactions of the plane’s passengers after they realized both engines had failed.
Some screamed. Some cursed. A direct quote: “Oh, crap, we‘re crashing!”
A few were furious. Others remained calm.
My favorites were the folks who remained in denial and flat-out refused to believe a disaster was happening.
“Problem? There isn’t a problem,” they insisted, right up to the moment the plane plopped into the river.
Experts who have studied how folks behave in crisis situations tell us that when the shit hits the fan, some people are survival-oriented, some totally flip out, and a third group sits frozen in shock and does…
