Safe Landing in Hudson River: Not a Friggin' Miracle!

I get SO SICK of God getting credit for heroic deeds of real men and women. Today it's the so-called miracle on the Hudson, when all 155 passengers survived after US Airways Flight 1549 lost power and was forced to crash-land in the Hudson River in New York.

If God deserves any recognition, maybe it should be for sending that flock of geese right into flight path of the Airbus A300. But it was the PILOT and CREW who saved that plane, through quick thinking, cool heads, and the skills they learned from thousands of hours of training.

God had nothing to do with saving that plane.

Those pilots spent enormous amounts of times in flight simulators, encountering almost every imaginable catastrophe. They practiced landing without power, without wheels, without brakes, without flap control ... you name it. They even practiced – yes – water landings. Before they got on that plane today, they already knew exactly what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.

This was no miracle at all. It was a highly trained crew, who long ago started preparing for exactly what happened today, and who, when the crisis arrived, held up under pressure, kept their heads, remembered their training, and executed what they'd been taught.

And once the cockpit crew did their jobs, the cabin crew did their jobs: They got everyone off the plane quickly and efficiently, and onto the rescue boats, before the Airbus A300 filled with water and sank. The pilots got them down, and the cabin crew got them off.

This was no miracle, it was a simple act of heroism and competence.

Well done, US Air crew! As for God ... thanks for nothing.

Tags: US Airways Flight 1549 miracle Hudson River crash religion atheism