Anne Applebaum sees the crash of Flight 1549, with the marvel that everyone survived thanks to cool work from the pilot and passengers, as a metaphor for our times, indeed, as the undoing of 9/11:
If one were searching for an appropriate metaphor — and, on days like this, one is always searching for a metaphor — it would be hard to do better than US Airways Flight 1549 and its safe crash-landing in the Hudson River last week. This extraordinary event was, if you like, the anti-Sept. 11: A plane hurtled into Manhattan, but its pilots, instead of aiming for a skyscraper and killing thousands, aimed at the river, and saved the lives of all 155 people on board.
There was no panic. “Witnesses described a scene of level-headed teamwork,” wrote The Post. Instead of freezing in terror, passengers scrutinized the emergency doors in the seconds before landing, the better to get them open quickly. After the landing, strangers helped one another out of the plane. Tour boats, ferries and tugboats sped to the scene to assist, even before emergency services arrived. An infant and a woman in a wheelchair were both rescued and taken safely ashore. The pilot walked up and down the aisle to make sure the seats were empty before leaving the sinking plane.