Us Airways Flight 1549 took off at 3.26p.m. It was less than a minute later when the pilot reported a “double bird strike” and said he needed to return to LaGuardia, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. He said the controller told the pilot to divert to an airport in nearby Teterboro, N.J. It was not clear why the pilot did not land at Teterboro. Church said there was no mayday call from the plane’s transponder. The plane splashed into the water off roughly 48th Street in midtown Manhattan – one of the busiest and most closely watched stretches of the river.

WABC-TV New York, NY