NY mayor hails 'hero' crash pilot

Not wishing to seem disingenuous, but the plane got hit by birds and it fell out of the sky, just how heroic was the pilot? All he did was hang on, gravity did the work, the plane hitting the ground/water was inevitable. Looking at the map why didn't he make it to the airport he was directed to land at?

Maybe the 'heroic' part was ditching in the river instead of landing on the city.

Update: As you can probably tell, I'm not a pilot and judging from this post on Kottke, it sounds like the pilot did a lot more than I envisage.

Mind you, I am right in saying he has a stupid name, and what's worse is that he is a 'third' -- at least two other people had this name before him.

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