Sometimes a video comes along on the Internet that you just have to see. And all the better when it’s not about a piano playing kitten, or someone catching a football in the groin.
This is serious.
A new virtual video by Kas Osterbuhr, an engineer at K3 Resources, is an excellent recreation of the US Airways Flight 1549’s fateful splashdown in the Hudson after taking off from LaGuardia on Jan. 15.
The video (actually, series of videos) is based on NTSB data, satellite imagery, Flight Recorder Date and Air Traffic Control recordings from LaGuardia, NY TRACON and Teterboro Airport.
It took Osterbuhr months to complete the project, which went live on Nov 2. He said he really started thinking about it as soon as he watched the miraculous water landing, and it turned into a passionate labor of love.
Osterbuhr, a licensed pilot and consultant, has made accident reconstructions before, but usually there is litigation involved -- and no happy endings -- so they couldn't be released to the public.
"As soon as it happened it piqued my interest immediately," he told NBC New York. "I thought eventually I'm going to have the opportunity, when all the data is released, to really present this in an interesting manner."
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Not only did he do the video below, which is a recreation of the flight, with ATC chatter involved, he also did a video that shows a satellite map with radar positions of the birds when they hit the plane, and another video that shows things more from an air traffic controller point of view. They are all available on his website.
"Really what I do, is data visualization. I happen to have a good background in avation accidents, but what I am good at is taking information from various places and bringing it together and allowing it to be interpreted by other people," Osterbuhr said.
Virtual recreations have been done before of the moments that made Pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger a hero, but none have been so all encompassing and engaging.
"My animation is interesting to pilots because they look at it from a pilot's perspective, it's interesting to air traffic controllers because they look at it from an air traffic controller's perspective. And that applies to everybody; passengers will look at it and see it from their perspective," said Osterbuhr.
He said he would love to get feedback from Captain Sullenberger, or the crew or U.S. Airways.
"There's a more that can be done with this, and I would really cherish the opportunity to work with the pilot or the crew or U.S. Airways to really make a training tool," he said.
But Osterbuhr said he's gotten a tremendous response already on the video and it's turning into a "virtual resume."
"This project that I've done I'm certain later in my career will be a pivotal moment in what I'm doing," he said. "Because, like I said before, a lot of the other work Ive done I haven't been able to share it," he said. "It's turned into a project of passion. At any one point [while working on it] I was totally prepared for nobody even caring that I did this."
