i think after departure the crew thought they have "just" a problem in the central hydraulics and decided that continue the flight with the ramaining systems to their own maintanace instead of retruning with an overweight landing and stranding the passengers far away from home is the better option.
many of you make one big mistake in this discussion :
the pilots after departure in new york surely DID NOT KNEW that the gear is completely failed !
the gear went up and they surely did not tried to lower it for a test- they focussed on the hydraulics.
the real eye opener came on final in warsaw when they moved the gear lever and nothing happened- not earlier ! then they made a go around and tried everything to get it lowered.
one another point: when we compare sully to wrona we have in both brave men one same thing : they both made in their life threatening situations the right decisions to save all lives on board- and this is the most important mission to every pilot.
beyond that the incidents were different- sully did not have the time to think about the situation, he had to make the ONLY right decision in seconds- a big decison in a pilots life- the decision to give up the hope that it will only be an incident and he will make it to an airport without scratching the plane and instead to go for a sure crash and ditching in the river because it will give the best option to save lifes - he was right. since the river was tall and long the decision to do it was bigger than the ditching by itself.
wronas situation was different : he had time to think , to go through the checklists, to try everything possible- but after no results were given he was finally faced with the situation that he has by hand to settle down a widebody on a runway without any gear, as smooth a s possible, and try to keep the plane on the runway.
in this case the hand skills on touchdown by itself were bigger that the decision to do it since he had time to analyse and finally no other option.
both mens did all right- all souls on board walked away.