It didn't quite measure up to making an emergency landing in the middle of the Hudson River, but as Harvey White stood beside the 120-foot chunk of airplane on a ramp off Interstate 95 near Perryville on Monday, he felt a sense of conquest.
White, a resident of Rising Sun, and his wife, Ruth, had spent an hour and a half in their SUV trying to track down a unique procession: a caravan of 35 vehicles accompanying the fuselage of the US Airways plane that splash-landed in January 2009.
"I thought the [state] police might stop us, but I'd have risked a fine to see this up close," said White, a retired electrician, as he gazed at the aircraft's battered, wingless body and the massive, custom flatbed trailer transporting it to an aviation museum inNorth Carolina.
The Whites were among thousands of people who have been following the progress of the slow-moving caravan, mostly online, since it left Newark, N.J., on Saturday, said Shawn Dorsch, president of the Carolinas Aviation Museum inCharlotte. As it continues to move through Maryland on Tuesday, Dorsch will be driving a support vehicle behind the historic piece of the Airbus A320 — which pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger landed in the Hudson's frigid waters, saving 155 lives.
"It took us two days to get out of New Jersey, because we stuck to local roads there. People were lined up to see the plane, sitting in lawn chairs, waving flags. Each day was a 70-mile block party," said Dorsch, who described himself as "overwhelmed" by the attention the trek has generated.
Dorsch has done interviews with The New York Times, Al Jazeera English TV and Japanese television since starting out, he said, and his smartphone buzzed repeatedly during a brief interview alongside I-95.
The J. Supor & Son Trucking & Rigging Co. Inc. of Harrison, N.J., which helped haul the plane from the water after Sullenberger's "Miracle on the Hudson" landing 29 months ago, is carrying out the transport effort. Given traffic conditions and other factors, the caravan generally travels at less than 10 mph.
The trucking company and museum are posting the caravan's locations in real time on their websites and sending out Twitter feeds — which is how the public is finding out where to greet the vehicles.
As far as the schedule goes, the only sure thing is that they'll reach Charlotte sometime Friday, Dorsch said. But he added that it has been difficult to stick to a timetable — or even a particular route.
As the caravan travels, its following seems to be growing.
"Our GPS malfunctioned for an hour yesterday, and [Supor] got 540 calls from people wanting to know where we were," said Dorsch, who estimated that hundreds were on hand as the aircraft and its escorts crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
"More people were waiting for [US Airways Flight] 1549 crossing the Delaware than the British had waiting for George Washington," he said with a laugh.
Things have gone smoothly, all things considered, Dorsch said. Supor officials who mapped out the trip decided to avoid interstates between Newark, N.J., and Wilmington, Del., because most of the overpasses are too low to accommodate the 15-foot, 5-inch clearance that the plane-bearing truck requires.
On the newer interstates from Maryland on down, most overpasses are high enough, which means they'll probably be on highways for the rest of the journey, Dorsch said.
The caravan, which got moving again about 9:15 a.m. Tuesday, will probably spend most of the day making its way across Maryland. It will travel south on I-95, then west on the Baltimore Beltway and west on Interstate 70, reaching the West Virginia line in the late afternoon if all goes according to plan.
It was passing through White Marsh about 10 a.m., and most of the overpasses along its route had at least a scattering of people with cameras, some waving American flags.
On Sunday, the vehicles hit the road at 5:30 a.m. and didn't pull over for the night until after 9 p.m., and a Twitter posting Tuesday morning said the caravan hoped to reach Hazelton, W.Va., via Interstate 68 by day's end.
The plane still has a long way to go, but on Monday, Dorsch — a flying buff who pilots his own plane — was enthusiastic about his museum's new acquisition.
The institution will preserve the plane as it was after the accident, he says.
As it sat on the shoulder of a weigh station ramp in Perryville, Dorsch strode the length of the fuselage, pointing out some of its key features: strips of tape the National Transportation Safety Board placed during the investigation, nicks and dents along the side, the caved-in co-pilot's window, and a 20-foot-long gash on the plane's rear underside — where it first hit the water as Sullenberger brought the craft down.
The plane went down shortly after taking off from LaGuardia Airport inNew York when it ran into a flock of birds that disabled the engines.
"A lot of people speculate that someone opened [a lower door] to let water in, but the luggage in the luggage compartment got slammed up against the floor" on impact, Dorsch said, which had the same effect.
His museum was interested in acquiring the craft for two reasons, he said. The plane has great local interest since it was based in Charlotte, as was its crew. And he called it a "fantastic artifact" that will be studied for generations.
The forced landing had the effect of opening the fuselage up almost as neatly as though it were a deliberately designed cross-section. That will give museum visitors a view of the inner workings of an aircraft "designed in the Space Age," Dorsch said, including its black boxes, carbon fibers and other modern construction techniques.
Chartis Insurance, the successor to AIG, which owned the damaged plane, donated it to the museum, Dorsch said.
Mechanics from US Airways will reassemble the plane over the summer, reattaching the wings and other parts. If all goes according to plan, the core of the permanent exhibit will be open by Jan. 15 — the third anniversary of the emergency landing.
As the trucks pulled off I-95 for a rest late Monday afternoon, Dorsch jogged from one place to another, thanking officers from the Maryland Transportation Authority and Maryland State Police, speaking with TV reporters, chatting with a crew of film students making a documentary on the trek, and coordinating plans with drivers.
He told the story of the caravan's trickiest maneuver. On Saturday, in the middle of Moorestown, N.J., it took an hour and a half — and the removal of a cemetery fence — to complete one particularly sharp turn.
Monday afternoon, the Whites finally caught up to the plane. They had first heard about the caravan on Wilmington TV news, learned about the Twitter notifications in the newspaper, and driven up and down I-95, narrowing their search in part by seeing crowds of people on the overpasses.
Harvey White — an aviation and mechanics buff — seemed unable to take his eyes off the quarry they'd tracked down, in part because he was fascinated by the four-section flatbed trailer Supor had created. "That rear piece is hinged for rounding corners," he said. "Amazing piece of work."
Ruth White, meanwhile, snapped pictures for their son, a trucker who lives in Texas.
"He's not going to believe we saw this," she said. "It's a piece of history."
Early Monday evening, more than a dozen people had parked in the weigh station lot, lining up behind yellow police tape to take pictures of the fuselage.
One Marylander — who had a very personal connection to Flight 1549 — was less curious about the caravan.
Jim Hanks, a Baltimore lawyer who was on the plane when it made the emergency landing, chuckled with pleasure when told of the attention the fuselage was getting. But he had no plans to see it as it traveled through the state.
"I've already seen that plane from the inside and the outside," Hanks said. "But I wish it a safe journey to Charlotte, and I welcome the display of it so more people can see for themselves the plane that Captain Sullenberger and [co-pilot Jeff] Skiles did such a magnificent job in bringing to a safe landing."
He added that he would take his wife, Sabine, and daughter, Maria Dorothy, to the Charlotte exhibition once it opens. "I'll let them see what Papa escaped from."