This is what a miracle looks like. It looks like a 60-foot piece of aluminum and steel sticking out of the frigid Hudson River at an odd angle. One end of the wing is attached to the sunken fuselage of a US Airways jetliner, the other claws toward the sky.
  The mighty Hudson is so cold that brown slush lines its banks like a bathtub ring.
“Miracle” is the buzzword of the city, a city not easily impressed.
  And the residents of this city sometimes look at each other and say: “What happened here in New York—this sudden, improvised, all-hands-on-deck
rescue—might not have happened in many other places.” But it happened in New York City, a place that knows calamity and knows the proper response.
“If it had been a movie, people probably wouldn’t have believed it,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. “It was too good to be true—the perfect landing, the phenomenal response, the rescue of every single person”...

Discussion Questions:
9. Why does the writer describe the event as a miracle?
Why did the plane not crash?

10. Passenger Mark Hood relates “miracle” to belief in God. What is the implied relationship?
What is the scariest experience you have had on an airplane?

11. In your opinion, what is most remarkable about what Brittany Catanzaro did? Why?
If an emergency incident similar to this one happened in your country’s largest city, would an ordinary citizen immediately get involved in the rescue? Why or why not?

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