Golf trip friends from Mass. among plane crash survivors

NEW YORK - A group of Massachusetts friends and relatives heading south for an annual golf trip was among those who escaped yesterday after a flight bound from New York's LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte, N.C., plummeted into the frigid Hudson River.

All 150 passengers and five crew members aboard the plane survived in what Governor David Paterson of New York called the "miracle on the Hudson."

Robert Kolodjay, a retired Chicopee postal carrier, left the state early yesterday morning with four friends and drove to Norwalk, Conn., where they picked up his son, Jeff, and headed to LaGuardia for a golf trip to Myrtle Beach, S.C.

After their initial flight on another airline was canceled, the Kolodjays and their golfing companions wound up on US Airways Flight 1549, which made an emergency landing in the Hudson River after a flock of birds apparently knocked out both engines. Emergency boats and ferries quickly arrived on the scene to rescue the shaken and shivering passengers.

"Thank God everyone's OK," Jane Kolodjay, Robert's wife and Jeff's mother, said in a phone interview with the Globe last night from her Chicopee home. "They didn't quite make it [to Myrtle Beach], but nobody on the plane died, and that's a miracle itself."

Jane Kolodjay was at work yesterday at the Chicopee Post Office when her cousin's daughter - whose husband was also part of the golf trip - called to tell her what happened. She "just told me that everything's OK, so relax, but they have some bad news," she said.

A few minutes after takeoff, Jeff Kolodjay heard a bang and saw a flash of blue flame from his seat in 22A, over the left wing. "Fire just started blowing out the left engine pretty hard," Kolodjay, 31, told the New York Daily News.

After the pilot told passengers to brace for a crash, "We put our heads down. We got ready," said Kolodjay, who was interviewed by the Daily News outside a terminal for the NY Waterway Ferry, where some of the rescued passengers huddled in white blankets. Although some screamed, most were calm, he said.

"We went straight down, and then we were in the water," he said. "The plane filled with water real quick," he added.

Passengers interviewed by the Globe in New York also said they heard a loud bang, then felt the plane jerk and slow down. Clay Presley, 54, a father of four from Charlotte, got out his BlackBerry and texted "I love you" to his wife after smelling smoke and seeing flames.

"I figured that was the last opportunity I would ever have to say that," Presley said yesterday at LaGuardia Airport, hours after the ordeal.

Presley stood with about a half-dozen other survivors as well as US Airways representatives and police officers at the airport, where they tried to book flights to Charlotte and find a place to stay the night. Many would be placed at airport hotels.

Presley described the remarkable calm passengers displayed as the plane plunged. After the pilot's announcement, some people wept. Others prayed, but many remained quiet, he said.

The plane hit the water, bouncing three times before stopping, Presley said.

"Your life flashed before your eyes," said Debbie Ramsey, 48, a passenger from Knoxville, Tenn.

As water began to flood the plane, people walked out to the wing in an orderly fashion for the most part. But with the air temperature in the 20s, the water soon began to freeze on the wings, making them slippery. As more passengers crowded on, some people panicked and jumped in the water, Presley said.

Ramsey managed to call her husband as she stood on the wing. "Oh, my God, I'm in a river," she recalled telling him.

"This was my second time on a plane. I won't be back on," Ramsey said laughing as she waited for her husband to arrive from Tennessee. "We're renting a car and driving back."

Presley said he called his wife and children to let them know he was OK. One of his daughters burst into tears when she heard his voice. Up until that moment, he had been able to contain his emotions, laughing and joking with fellow passengers to ease the tension of what they had gone through.

But he lost control after hearing his daughter weep.

"That made me cry," he said, his voice hoarse. "We all recognize how lucky we are. We feel pretty good nobody died."

Jeff Kolodjay, who works in medical education, could not be reached by the Globe for an interview last night because his cellphone sank after the landing. His father, Robert, did not bring his phone on the flight, Jane Kolodjay said.

She identified the four Springfield-area residents traveling with her husband and son as Jorge Morgado, Rick Delisle, Jim Stefanik, and Dave Carlos. Attempts to reach them or their families last night were unsuccessful.

The golf trip curtailed, Robert Kolodjay will probably return to Chicopee today, said his wife, who is eager to see him.

"Their sticks are on the bottom of the Hudson," she said. "Very good ones, I might add."

Globe correspondent Sean Sposito contributed to this report.