Above: An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 is seen just before
it crashes into the sea off the Comoro Islands in 1996.

Ethiopian Airlines jet ditching in 1996 yielded survival lessons for NYC crash
CNN

Lessons learned from previous successful airliner ditchings helped pilot C.B. “Sully” Sullenberger save 155 lives when he put his US Airways A320 jetliner down in the Hudson River, a fellow pilot told CNN.

Twenty-three people died when an Overseas National Airways DC-9 ditched off the Caribbean island of St. Croix in 1970, and 123 were killed in the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 off the Comoro Islands near Africa in 1996.

But Emilio Corsetti, an Airbus 320 pilot and aviation author, said those ditchings were actually successful “because people were able to get out” — 40 in the 1970 crash and 52 in the 1996 incident. Read more at CNN.