On January 15, 2009, US Airways flight 1549 apparently struck a flock of birds shortly after taking off from New York's LaGuardia airport and lost power in both of its engines. The pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, made a skillful emergency landing in the Hudson River, and all 150 passengers and five crew members safely evacuated the plane. The passengers calmly helped each other out onto the wings and into the plane's life rafts. Local ferries, seeing the plane coming down, sped to the site and took the passengers on board. What might have been a fatal disaster in the eighteen degree Fahrenheit temperature was in fact a fairly typical example of American's response to emergencies.