Whilst not wishing to take anything away from the excellent performance by the crew of this Airbus I am getting more than a little tired of Fox News declaring that this was the "first" successful ditching of a commercial airliner.
A Garuda 737 suffered a flame out of both engines ccaused by extreme water injestion during a major tropical storm in East Java in Indonesia in 2002. The crew ditched the aircraft in the Solo river and all passengers survived but a flight attendant who jumped from the plane died. This ditching was all the more laudable as the aircraft clipped the trees on top of a ridge on the approach and one wing hit the river bank.
