Miracle on the Hudson, My Foot!
Back in 2006, I posted a rant about news people either calling events miracles, or letting other people get away with it unchecked.
Well, yesterday, a very skilled US Airways pilot dead-stick landed his A320 in the Hudson River with no loss of life. Good job! Kudos! A miracle? I think not.
Yet the Governor of New York, David Paterson, seems to feel he is qualified to make just that determination, and declared the landing a “miracle on the Hudson”.
Here are some events that would (or could) have been miracles:
- Birds, about to be sucked into the engine, would vanish briefly and reappear where they had been after the plane had safely passed them by
- The plane, about to fly through a flock of birds, would vanish briefly and reappear safely beyond the birds
- The plane, having had its engines disabled by the multiple bird strikes, actually makes it to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, despite the airport being far outside the plane’s glide path, and such a landing being impossible within the confines of the laws of physics
- The engines, after aspirating some unknown number of birds, self destruct, fail, then regenerate and operate normally for the rest of the flight
- With the plane about to crash in the Hudson River, all 155 passengers, 3 flight attendants and 2 pilots suddenly find themselves back at La Guardia, safe and sound
- I could go on like this for hours
Please. Before you start declaring things to be miracles, find out what the definition of “miracle” is, and brush up on your high school physics, chem and bio. That’s all I’ve got going for me, and I’m way ahead of the Governor of New York on this one.