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Published: Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2010 / Updated: Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2010 11:58 AM

Flight 1549 survivor from Lake Wylie remembers: “I thought we were going to die”

Beth McHugh just wanted to get home. That was foremost in the Lake Wylie woman’s mind as she boarded US Airways Fight 1549 last year.

Making the flight from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte Douglas International Airport was part of McHugh’s work routine.

“I was working 14 hours a day, flying back and forth,” McHugh said. “Never having enough time for all the little stuff.”

On Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009, McHugh settled in seat 20-C. The plane, piloted by Capt. C.B. Sullenberger, made its way down the runway before going airborne.

Then normality went out the window.

“We were in the air about 90 seconds before the geese hit,” McHugh told more than 50 women who gathered last week for a Newcomers Club of York County meeting in Rock Hill.

From McHugh’s aisle seat some 14 months and three days ago, she heard a warning that confirm encroaching danger.

“‘This is your captain,’” McHugh, then 64, recalled. “‘Brace for impact.’”

There was precious little time.

“I thought we were going to crash into the buildings,” said McHugh, evoking a near collective gasp. “I thought we were going to die.”

From aisle seat 20-C, McHugh couldn’t see the Hudson River. She was supposed to arrive in Charlotte around 4:45 p.m. Instead, she ended up in the Hudson River at 3:31 p.m.

“We came in and hit the water at about 150 miles per hour,” she recalled.

One year, two months and three days have passed since the famous “miracle crash” in which all 155 passengers and the crew survived. On that plane were five people from the York County area, including three from Lake Wylie, a Tega Cay woman and a couple from the Indian Land area, McHugh said. For surviving and escaping the sinking plane, McHugh is grateful to God.

“Thank you for letting me still be here,” she said as more than one woman wiped tears. “Thank you for letting me have another chance, a second change. I need to do something with it. I need to make a difference.”

McHugh tells the story of the crash turn miracle with smiles and laughter.

And yes, even though tears.

“The captain put us down in the middle of the river at the right time,” she said as women openly cried. “There are so many things that could have gone wrong that day. It was an absolute miracle.”

That’s because death didn’t take not one of the 155 people aboard Flight 1549. Some were treated for injuries. McHugh had blue feet, but she also had life.

Aftermath

A flight attendant had an L-shaped gash in her leg and a passenger had cracked ribs. But McHugh at the time was clueless to either injury.

“I was sitting way in the back,” she said. “Before I ever picked my head up from the brace position, the water was up to my knees. It was frigid. I’ve never felt water that cold.”

Then a survivals instinct kicked in.

Some people climbed over seats and others started going out of exit windows even as a flight attendant gave a warning.

“‘You have two minutes to get off the plane,’” McHugh recalled the attendant saying.

But McHugh, a mother and grandmother, faced an obstacle, she said.

“I couldn’t get my life jacket from under the seat,” she said. “The only thing that came into my mind was my daughters’ faces and my grandchildren and the idea that I would never see them again.”

Steps away, a woman with an infant separated by seating arrangements from her husband and their toddler age daughter faced their own hardship, McHugh recalled.

“When the smoke came in the plane, the little girl said, ‘Momma. Momma,’” McHugh recalled. “I will never forget the look on her (the mother’s) face. She turned around and said, ‘It’s OK. You’re with daddy.’”

But the mother and her infant were trapped, McHugh said.

“I saw the mother struggling with the baby,” McHugh said. “She couldn’t get out of her seat. She couldn’t climb over.”

A male passenger took time out from saving himself to save that mother and her baby, McHugh said.

“He literally picked her up and put her in the aisle and shoved her up to the exit doors,” McHugh said.

Even as McHugh and others sloshed their way through the cold water as they made their way to an exit door, she said.

“When I came up to the exit window, people were standing in the exit window, trying to get out to the wings,” McHugh said. “The wings seemed to be full. Then I heard the flight attendants. They were calling, ‘Come up front. Come up front.’”

Obeying would be somewhat of a challenge, McHugh said.

“It took a little longer to get up front because we were walking in water,” she said.

“The plane was sinking in the back.”

Finally, McHugh reached her destination.

“The flight attendant told me to jump into the raft,” McHugh said. “It was about a five-foot jump down. There were already people in the raft. I was afraid I would hit someone, but I jumped. There was no choice.”

Trying to find a spot on the wings was not an option, she said.

“The wings were covered with a thin sheet of ice and airline fuel,” she said. “People were having a very hard time holding on.”

McHugh landed in the raft.

“We suddenly looked up, and there were the ferry boats,” she said. “It was an amazing immediate response.”

Survivors sent the initial ferries to collect survivors from the plane’s wings. About 12 minutes after McHugh landed in the raft, she and others climbed about six feet up a ladder to ferry boat.

“The crew was working really fast, pulling people up,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh, thank God. I’m safe. We were rescued, and I finally felt safe.’”

About 50 people went to hospital emergency rooms, she said.

“They had hundreds of hundreds of ambulances,” she said “They thought this was going to be such a disaster. When they (medics) got there, people were walking around and talking. They (medics) were stunned.”

At some point, a woman noticed McHugh’s blue feet.

“A young woman on the ferry boat made me take off my stockings and gave me her socks,” McHugh recalled. “She said, ‘You need to put these on. Your feet are blue.’ I still have those socks she gave me.”

And McHugh is blessed as she continues to share her message of the Hudson River crash miracle. That miracle, she said, ushered hope at a time when the United States faced its Great Recession and high unemployment.

“Everybody needed a miracle,” she said. “Miracles are what gives us hope, and hope is what feeds our soul. It’s what keeps us going.”

Moving on

For McHugh, the memories are just as fresh as if the crash had just happened.

“I’m not sure the memories will ever go away,” she said. “I don’t really want them to go away. I want them to remind me of the gift, the second chance, I’ve been given.”

After the crash, McHugh and passengers were in shock she said.

“Some people got back on a plane and flew to Charlotte,” she said. “Some spent the night.”

McHugh elected to stay in the area at the New Jersey home of her daughter, Caitlin. Later, she returned to Lake Wylie.

“I flew 80 more flights after that,” said McHugh of post crash flying.

About three months after the crash, McHugh’s luggage and its content, sanitized and cleaned, were returned to her. Then at the age of 65, McHugh retired from her job and spends her “second chance” enjoying her family and teaching people of the crash and its miracle.

“There were a hundred positive things that went on that day,” she said. “I saw the best of humanity that day.”

For those facing their own plane crash turn miracle, McHugh issued a challenge:

“Live your life out loud,” she said. “Live it so that when you are gone people will say ‘Wow, you made a difference.’”