January 20 - The recovery of the crashed US Airways A320 from New York's Hudson River involved one of the largest floating cranes in operation on the US East Coast.
Engineers working for Jersey City-based Weeks Marine recovered the aircraft for examination by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
After attaching steel cables around the fuselage, the lifting was made more difficult by the fact that the aircraft was almost completely submerged in the water, with only its tail visible. This meant that while it was under the surface, it weighed only 100 tonnes, well within the crane's 500 tonne capacity. When it broke the surface, the water-filled fuselage lost its buoyancy and was weighed down with around 500 tonnes of water.
Engineers allowed the aircraft to drain before lifting it onto a barge.
This operation is thought to be one of very few instances of an aircraft that has crashed onto water being recovered in almost one piece.
Weeks Marine was founded 90 years ago and moved steel wreckage from the World Trade Center after 9/11 by water.
