The program on TV called "Mayday" showed that the jet that glided then landed successfully in the Hudson river was flown by its computer. The pilot simply steered it. The computer made the perfect landing and the pilot probably would have stalled it and/or broke it followed by rapid sinking into the water.
Your comments casting aspersions on Captain Sullenberger's skill in the ditching of US Airways Flight 1549 need to be addressed. Did you actually watch the show? You really should check your facts first before making such absurd statement as fact.
You might be able to see it again here:
**broken link removed**
The Mayday episode (Season 10, Hudson River Runway) was not avaibale tonight on the Mayday site, but it is available here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l3BDBziZkw
Pay particular attention to the period from 27:00 to 30:00 minutes.
I listened to the whole Mayday episode and not a word was said about a computer landing. The A320 is a fly-by-wire aircraft, and as such, all controls are in a sense done by a computer, but inputs to those controls were by Cpt. Sullenberger. To say that a computer landed that airplane and he was simply steering it is ridiculous.
It is stated in the show that he got the airplane slower than a ground-based analyst thought he should have been. Sully was an experienced sailplane and military pilot. A good pilot can feel how the airplane is responding. It is obvious that Sully judged his glide ratio and sink rate better than the computers did. His action to start the APU and ensure electrical power was probably related to his recognition of the situation. He needed to make a spot landing. In fact, the spokeswoman in the show stated outright that the simulator models were simply inadequate, but then proceded to apply conclusions from those models to Sully's actions. Let's see, according to her, without following the FAA-approved checklist and trying to restart the engines, 50% of the simulations crashed on land -- most likely killing all aboard. When adjustments were made for the time lost in following the checlklist, 100% of the flights ended in a crash. Sullenberger's flight survived. Was he wrong or were the simulations wrong? That is not a hard decision to make, is it? Had he not at least started to follow the checklist until ditching became eminent, he would have been criticized for that too.
John