It's a lot for a seaplane...

Hull was less than 2 months old.

Now that you have jogged my memory, that is pretty much verbatim what my buddy said; he also believes Boeing's Vref numbers are slightly low for the 800.

Haha, nice one.

It seems the survival rate was not such a miracle at all. The miracle was that a quick thinking tower controller was able to patch Captain Sullenburger through to the flight crew, who then talked them down as best he could. This is another great example of CRM and a tribute to ATC personnel. Kudos to that controller!

PS, I just talked to Sully; he said the outcome could have been even better, had he not had a few cocktails prior to receiving the call...

They landed short. God knows how but a buddy of mine went around before lion and landed immediately after them. Bali is a cluster at the best of times. You tell the controllers what you want and hope they don't take you north of final towards the bloody great volcano.

Regardless of other factors there are probably, at least, some training issues here. As far as the aircraft, I am forming an opinion. For one, this model was absolutely not conceived of by engineers. It is obviously a management decision that the engineers carried out. Let's see how far we can take it without requiring a complete recertification... The 800 is so far off the 737's original design point and TC it is not even funny. (not that the original straight pipe was any performer...) I am all for making changes including fuselage plugging (lengthening), Etc. however this has become rediculous. Just like flying, when any one thing is changed it affects many other things; the same with the physical design. Most experienced pilots have all flown certain types of airplanes where being slightly off speed will cause the bottom to "fall out", high sink rate, Etc. Those are common enough and not generally an issue with the proper training and supervised IOE. This aircraft has deeper issues that have not been adequately accounted for. Just my opinion, your mileage may vary...

Can you ask him how the weather was on final? Windshear? Microbursts? Clear?

Doesnt Lion have pay to play FO's?

Did your buddy mention if there was any type of down burst, windshear or micro burst in the area at the time? I just read an article that said they flew into a microburst. Here: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2...ali-crash?lite