Airlines' bottom line safe, too

The stars were aligned for US Airways when, minutes after takeoff from La Guardia Airport, the plane carrying 150 passengers shuddered after a strike by birds apparently knocked out both engines.

So flawless was the emergency landing Thursday in the Hudson River by Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and four other crew members, it could be the stuff of a Hollywood movie.

US Airways Group Inc. basked in the limelight for the dramatic survival and rescue of everyone aboard, but experts say flight emergencies - whether they turn out well or badly - do not have a long-lasting effect on airlines' bottom line.

"If you look at air incidents generally, and how companies perform after them, outside of a few cases, there isn't much long-term impact," said Robert W. Mann, an aviation consultant in Port Washington, N.Y.

An exception was the 1996 Everglades, Fla., ValuJet crash, which raised questions of airplane maintenance at the low-fare carrier. ValuJet eventually went out of business.

As for attracting passengers with positive headlines, that is fleeting, too. "People who have a vested stake in an airline, whether customers or suppliers, generally stay with that allegiance. There isn't much change," Mann said.

Do not expect US Airways to tout the near-perfect crash in advertisements. Or management to appear on television talk shows, boasting. "It's positive news, but it also brings fear of flying issues to the fore," Mann said.

Charles Eastlake, a private pilot who teaches airplane design at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., said that while "there is undoubtedly significant pride within the company about how it all worked out, it isn't the kind of thing they are likely to talk about publicly."

"The people involved deservedly get a pat on the back by their peers, but it's done quietly. They don't want to remind the public that airplanes crash," Eastlake said. "It's a marketing issue. Public discussion about crashes is not good marketing."

US Airways - the nation's fifth-largest airline and the predominant carrier at Philadelphia International Airport - is the product of the 2005 merger of America West Airlines and the old, twice-bankrupt US Airways.

Since the merger, US Airways has been beset with labor problems, including the failure to combine pilots into one union. Some analysts have suggested US Airways may be more vulnerable to liquidation because it filed for bankruptcy reorganization twice and owns fewer assets.

US Airways operates more than 3,100 flights a day. Flight 1549 bound for Charlotte, N.C., was just one.

"There's a degree of 'But for the grace of God go we,' " said Mann, of R.W. Mann & Co. "Because crashes historically, as infrequently as they occur, have not worked out particularly well."

"Had this occurred on a poor weather day, or at night. Had it occurred other than where it did, such that these ferries could quickly evacuate people, the outcome could have been far different."

Mann said the pilot's gentle landing of the plane, keeping the fuselage intact, was the "best possible" outcome. It will be a matter of much discussion internally at US Airways, but he doubts the airline will tout it publicly. "Because you can never tell what's going to happen tomorrow," Mann said. "Safety in this business is one in a million stuff. It's random occurrences, and it's combinations of random occurrences."

At a news conference Friday with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, US Airways chief executive officer Doug Parker praised the many rescue workers who assisted and said he was "extremely proud of our crew for their quick and heroic actions."

While praise has been heaped on Sullenberg, the captain and former Air Force fighter pilot who joined US Airways in 1980, three flight attendants evacuated the passengers in less than 90 seconds, the Association of Flight Attendants union said.

"Their years of experience and training made all the difference once the aircraft was in the water," said Mike Flores, the flight attendants' union president at US Airways.