Driving down the Henry Hudson Parkway about an hour ago, I was reminded that 10 years ago today, Captain Sullenberger glided his powerless US AIR Airbus 320 into a soft water landing on the Hudson. He only cleared the George Washington bridge by a few hundred feet, and then managed to ditch the plane just a few hundred feet away from tour boats tied up on the west side of Manhattan, just a few blocks from where I am sitting right now.

It was a story I covered then for NBC. And in reporting on the investigation, it quickly became clear that all the planets — and the Gods — had aligned that day for Sully, his crew and his passengers. Had the bird strike happened 20 seconds earlier, he never would have cleared the bridge. If it had happened 20 seconds later, he never would have been able to turn around and make the river. If the incident had happened an hour earlier, visibility on the river was virtually zero. And an hour later, the river was icing up.

Perhaps the most miraculous thing about the miracle on the Hudson was that the rescue of all on board happened so quickly. The total elapsed time from impact to rescue was just 24 minutes. Today, US AIR is no longer. It’s now American.

But that original aircraft is on display in a museum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Tom Hanks did a movie.

But what about the bird problems at LaGuardia and many airports like it? On this cold January morning ten years later, that problem has still not been solved.