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The Boston Market Story
Audubon Society sues USAirways after great goose grindup
By KATHLEEN R. SULLIVAN
Special from Bloomberg News
PATE'-ERSON, N.J. -- The New Jersey Audubon Society today announced it is suing USAirways after dozens of geese and seagulls were massacred by two large engines on Flight 1549, which then landed in the Hudson River, killing several undersize striped bass, for which the airline has also been fined.
Meanwhile, pilot Charles "Gabe" Sullenberger, in an exclusive interview with heralded Record News of Northern New Jersey and Its Surrounding Environment mojo Evonne Coutros-Coutros-Ghali, said that his heroics were really no big thing.
"When I realized we were going down," Sullenberger said, "the first thing I had to do was feather the engine. As you can well imagine, the engine was already pretty well feathered.
"Then things got dicey. The flight was bound for Charlotte, North Carolina, where weather reports said the temperature would be in the forties. I glanced at the passenger manifest and saw that only a few of them were continuing on to Cancun, so I surmised that not many had bathing suits.
"It was a gamble, but I announced that if anybody had a bathing suit in their carry-on baggage, they should put it on, and if they had a spare they might consider donating it to the person in the next seat.
"We were losing altitude fast, so I told the flight attendants to hand out peanuts. I figured everybody would be so upset about the possibility of getting salmonella that they'd forget they might drown in the next few minutes.
"Then I experienced a crisis. We were headed straight for the George Washington Bridge, and the plane didn't have an EZPass transponder. I asked my co-pilot if he had six dollars and he said the toll was eight dollars. He pulled out his wallet but all he could find was a coupon for two dollars off a rotisserie Canada goose dinner with two side orders at the Boston Market in Hackensack. He said he'd skipped lunch, and if I flew through the line at the Boston Market he'd use the two dollars he saved to make up the difference. I told him that was too risky, since he'd borrowed five dollars from me just that morning to buy a latte at Starbucks.
"So I got on the intercom and asked if there was a numismatologist on board. A passenger named Edwin P. Reiter came forward and said he had eight Sacagawea dollars. I asked if he thought he could throw them in the basket at 300 miles per hour and he said, 'What do I look like, a New Jersey Net?' At that point, I knew we were safe."
In a related development, thousands of mourners attended a memorial service for Jonathan Livingston Seagull, who is reputed to have been sucked into the Airbus A320's right engine. Livingston Seagull's remains were unable to be identified, but several copies of the New York Times bestseller list from the 1970s were seen floating in the Hudson River behind the plane. Reports on the web site of the National Enquirer that bestselling author Eric Seagull and reputed gangster Bugsy Seagull were among the victims could not be independently confirmed.
Also, Paramus Mayor James "Ken" Tedesco was arrested on animal cruelty charges after several vacation brochures for Charlotte, N.C., were found in a park where residents had complained of a growing population of Canada geese.
And a spokesman for the federal Department of Homeland Security denied that the ill-fated geese were part of a flock that had trained at a secret al-Qaida base in the restive North Waziristan section of Pakistan despite reports that several passengers reported hearing squawks of "Allahu Aflac!" shortly before the near-disaster.
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Chickie says, Why did the mojo cross the road?*
*Wi-fi not?
