The remarkable true story of Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s heroic crash landing in the Hudson River, as told by the passengers who owe him their lives.   Millions watched the aftermath on television, while others witnessed the event actually happening from the windows of nearby skyscrapers. But only 155 people know firsthand what really happened on U.S. Airways Flight 1549 on January 15, 2009. Now, for the first time, the survivors detail their astounding, terrifying, and inspiring experiences on that freezing winter day in New York City. Written by two esteemed journalists, Miracle on the Hudson is the entire tale from takeoff to bird strike to touchdown to rescue, seen through the eyes and felt in the souls of those on board the fateful flight. Revealing many new and compelling details, Miracle on the Hudson dramatically evokes the explosion and "smell of burning flesh" as both engines were destroyed by geese, the violent landing on the river that felt like a "huge car wreck," the gridlock in the aisles as the plane filled swiftly with freezing water, and the thrill of the passengers' rescue from the wings and from rafts—all of it recalled by the "cross section of America" on board. Jay McDonald, a thirty-nine-year-old software developer, had survived brain-tumor surgery just two years earlier and now faced the unimaginable. Tracey Wolsko, a nervous flier, suddenly became other people's rock: "Just pray. It's going to be all right." Jim Whitaker, a construction executive, reassured a nervous mother of two young children on board, only later admitting, "I was pathologically lying the whole time." As the plane started sinking, Lucille Palmer, eighty-five, told her daughter to save herself: "Just leave me!" Featuring much more than what the media reported—moments of chaos in addition to stoicism and common sense, and the fortuitous mistakes and quick instincts that saved lives that otherwise would have been lost— Miracle on the Hudson is the chronicle of one of the most phenomenal feel-good stories of recent years, one that could have been a nightmare and instead became a stirring narrative of heroism and hope for our times. “Stunning . . . Open this book and you will not close it until you reach the last page.”—Buzz Bissinger, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Shooting Stars and Friday Night Lights “An extraordinary drama seen through the eyes of ordinary people.”— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Absorbing, inspirational . . . a detailed, moment-by-moment account of the accident and its aftermath . . . Anyone who remembers the dramatic . . . event will be riveted.”— Publishers Weekly   “William Prochnau and Laura Parker bring to the passengers’ impassioned accounts of survival the old-fashioned values of the finest gumshoe reporters.”—Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer William Prochnau and Laura Parker  interviewed 120 passengers of Flight 1549, as well as many first responders and rescuers. Prochnau, a former national correspondent for The Washington Post , wrote three acclaimed books, including Once Upon a Distant War . Parker covered aviation for The Washington Post and spent ten years as a national correspondent at USA Today . William Prochnau died in 2018. Chapter One Come Fly with Me New York awoke that thursday morning in january to a storybook scene— Manhattan in a snowstorm; the flakes whipping almost sideways through the skyscraper canyons and a bright coat of white blotting out all of mankind's gray. Storybook, that is, if you were hunkered down and had no intention of flying. Arctic air had also brought in the winter's coldest day, with early- morning temperatures in the low teens and single-digit wind chills. Ice formed around the edges of the Hudson and floes halted ferry traffic in the northern suburbs upstream. Along the Avenue of the Americas, Tripp Harris bent into the wind as he bucked his way to get his morning coffee at Starbucks. The one- block walk seemed like a mile. A technological adviser to banks, he had flown up the night before from Charlotte, North Carolina—"Wall Street South," as his hometown, a burgeoning banking center, had become known. For the past four months, the banking calamity had helped keep US Airways, which had a financial calamity of its own, flying almost at full capacity on its premier north-south runs. Harris, one of the modern "road warriors" who racked up miles with back-to-back business flights, had scheduled a single morning meeting at Citibank. He would make the turnaround in twenty-four hours, less if he was lucky. Knowing the kind of mess the snow would make of LaGuardia, New York's ancient but conveniently located airport, Harris had booked the five o'clock on US Air. With a little luck and the hole card of his frequent-flier status, he'd push for an earlier one—Flight 1549, a two-hour, home-for-dinner flight to Douglas International. Not far away