I beg all your pardon, but why at 3:29 are we turning down the Hudson and not back to LGA?
Believe it or not, I did a not altogether dissimilar exercise in the sim. about three years ago, where we suffered a double engine failure (what seemed to me) to be too just far from any of the available airfield options. (The examiner put us in a situation where there was no clear choice between La Guardia, JFK or Newark.)
I chose JFK, (if only because I was familiar with it) and was very pleasantly surprised to see how far we managed to stretch the glide - i.e.,the aeroplane (a 773) went much further than I would have hoped, and we got in, but only with a VERY late selection of gear and a very late turn onto finals.
But had it been the real world outside my windscreen and I had just suffered a real double engine failure, would I have even considered stretching the glide, unsure I would make it, in a dead stick approach over the very built up southern Long Island, when I had a 'sure thing' - the Hudson - as an alternative? Absolutely not.
The Monday Morning Quarterbacks armed with computer models may prove the the aircraft would have made it back to LGA from the 3:29 position. However, that will not have been totally (note that word) obvious to the captain in the split second (and note that vitally important phrase as well) that he had to make a decision.