"All flights are being held from New York airspace because of an incident"

When you're sitting on the runway at La Guardia Airport, about to take off, and the pilot says that all flights will remain grounded because of an "incident in New York airspace", with no further detail, one thinks some harrowing thoughts. It is among the few times when you're not quite so bothered by a small delay in travel, knowing something terrible may have happened. Yet the incident didn't turn out to be a tragedy. US Airways flight from New York to Charlotte ditched in the Hudson River after birds flew into both engines...especially interesting to Blograham considering that the plane I was aboard was fourth in line behind that one.

The plane, with 150 passengers and 5 crewmembers, landed in the water with no engine power, and stayed afloat long enough for all onboard to be rescued. “This is a potential tragedy that may have become one of the most magnificent days in the history of New York City agencies,”said New York Governor David Patterson. Mayor Bloomberg claimed that the pilot “walked the plane twice after everyody else got off,” to make sure that everyone had escaped," and a retired police officer told Governor Patterson that "he’d participated in these types of rescues and he’d never seen anything this magnificent."

99% of the time, sensational news is reporting on death and destruction. Perhaps it will turn out that the crash was caused by gross negligence on someone's part, but thus far there appear to be only heroes and no goats. 

Alberto Panero, [a] passenger, told CNN: “Within a couple of minutes all of a sudden you just heard a loud bang, and the plane shook a bit and immediately you could smell smoke, like fire. Although it didn’t seem like it was out of control we knew something was going on because we were turning back.”
Mr. Panero added: “We just hit, and somehow the plane just stayed afloat and we were able to get on the raft and, it’s just incredible right now that everyone’s still alive.”
Mr. Kolodjay said that the plane started taking on water soon after it hit the river. “It was filled up to our waist by the time we got off,” he said.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/nyregion/16crash.html?_r=1&h