Goofs

About the middle of the movie Sully struggles his way towards the rear end of the plane waist deep in the water to check if everyone has evacuated. Seconds later when he goes into pilot's cabin his pants are completely dry.

In the flashback to Sully's Air Force emergency landing there are several inconsistencies related to headings and runway alignment. He is instructed to land on runway 21 but actually touches down on runway 22, either 21 or 22 would exist but not both. At one point he states to be on a heading of "020" after clearly having the runway in sight. This is not feasible as the numbers "22" for a runway indicate its magnetic heading, thus the final approach heading would be 220. A heading of 020 would have him traveling away from the airport.

In the piloted sims, both Captains had their hands on the throttles, and throttles at maximum thrust, but both engines were supposed to be dead. The throttles at that point served no purpose. In addition, early in the Dual Engine Failure QRH for the Airbus calls for moving the throttles to the Idle position, rather than full as depicted in the Sims.

In the aircraft push-back scene, the aircraft is powered by IAE V2500 engines and in most other shots, particularly the ones involving the bird strike and glide before ditching, the aircraft is shown having CFM 56 engines.

When the rescue ferry team heads out into the Hudson, Barry Leonard is given a hat to warm up. The hat disappears for a scene and appears back immediately afterwards.

During the take-off scene First Officer Skiles has his hands on the throttles all the time, from the runway till the plane is airborne. In reality A320 pilots must immediately take their hands off the throttle as soon the plane has reached V1 speed.

When the simulations are being run and broadcast, both set of pilots move the thrust levers forward in flight and back to idle at flare as if both engines were still running and not making a "dead stick" no engine landing. Both thrust levers should be set and remain at the "IDLE" position in order to attempt a restart.

One of the NTSB members states that they will prove that the left engine was still running at "idle or below" after the bird strike. There is no "below idle" on a jet engine. The lowest consistent setting is idle. Any RPM below that indicates that the engine is either climbing to idle after starting, or dropping from idle to zero during engine shutdown.

No slide is visible when the forward boarding door is opened, forcing a passenger to jump into the river. While this is a factual moment that actually happened (the forward slide did not inflate immediately and a passenger was directed by a flight attendant to jump into the river), that slide would still have been visible, albeit not inflated. Evacuation slides are stored in slide packs that are attached to the inside of the aircraft door. When the door is armed, part of the slide that is attached to what is called a girt bar is hooked into the floor of the aircraft. As a result, if the door is opened when armed, the slide falls from the slide pack in the door while still connected to the girt bar and the aircraft, and would normally automatically inflate. In this case, the slide fell out, but malfunctioned and did not inflate. In real life, it was inflated manually by the flight attendant. In this scene, no slide is visible at all until it appears between shots and starts inflating.

At 00:34:05 when Sully turns on the APU, the power comes back immediately. In reality it takes about 2 minutes for the APU to start up.

The cockpit voice recording is highly sensitive in nature. It would never be played in front of hundreds of people like in the movie. In fact, it is illegal for the NTSB to release any portion of the recording to the press. (Fair: That is why the CVR is listened to on headphones, so that only those directly involved in the hearing have access).

During the climb out of LaGuardia, Sully and Skiles violate the sterile cockpit rule by having a conversation about the view of the Hudson River. This rule was violated during the real incident.

When Sully is jogging through Times Square, an advertisement is shown for Party City's Halloween display, unsuited for January.

In the flashback to Sully's Air Force days, when making an emergency approach in an F-4 Phantom, fighter mock-up cockpit, it appears that they did not have the correct parachute riser/harness fittings available. Sully and his rear crewman's parachute harnesses fittings are not connected to their ejection seats and it appears they jury-rigged some kind of setup to make the seats's parachute risers appear to be shoulder harnesses.

In the scene immediately following the rescue from the Hudson river 2 gentlemen are seen wearing life jackets with the USAir logo. US Air rebranded as US Airways and changed all logos in 1997 by 2009 there would not have been anything with a USAir logo.

When the actual incident is shown, as the plane is flying towards the Hudson and we see it passing by, the noise of the engines is clearly heard. But supposedly they are both dead so they should not be making noise.

When the passenger that had jumped in the river is helped onto the rescue boat he's wearing the first officer's shirt that's draped over him to help warm him. When the first officer gets on board the rescue boat he's wearing his shirt, tie and jacket.

What is not shown in the film is that there was an off duty pilot, in uniform, riding in the passenger cabin. It was this pilot who gave his shirt to the soaking passenger.

When Sully is about to enter the plane at about 27:31 with his carry-on, he drops an item of clothing. The stewardess sees this but does nothing.

When the pilot controlled simulations are being shown, all four pilots speak English with American accents. Even if the were speaking English at the Toulouse facility, the accents would be French, German, British, and possibly other European, not all American.

Sully has just walked through the plane in knee high water, but when he is pulled to the rescue boat his pants are dry.

One taxi cab has a billboard on top for the The Revenant (2015).

Although the film is set in January, in numerous shots the trees along the banks of the Hudson are in full leaf.

In the air traffic control facility, the flight is shown on a radar scope as "USA1549". US Airways and America West Airlines merged in 2005, and they received a single operator certificate from the FAA in October of 2008. Since this accident occurred in 2009, the ICAO identification (which is what is displayed on radar scopes) would have been "AWE", which is a throwback to America West. So the radar scope should have shown "AWE1549" instead of "USA1549".

While Sully is running through Times Square, he passes numerous "Aladdin" posters/flags (on lampposts). Aladdin opened on Broadway in 2014.

In some aerial shots of LaGuardia, aircraft painted the 2013 American Airlines livery can be seen.

For the first simulated landing at LaGuardia, the plane approaches from the southwest, landing on runway 4, which is the most direct route back to the airport and the only one that makes sense. But for the second simulation (with the 35 second delay), the craft approaches from the northeast, attempting to land on runway 22--the same runway, but in the opposite direction. This makes no sense, because they would have had to fly past the airport, turn around and then come back.

When Sully looked out of the room window, In Manhattan, at the street below where reporters and news vans were gathered at least two of the news vans were from San Francisco television affiliates (KRON 4 and KTVU 2) instead of New York affiliates.

The movie showed the FAA HQ building. Then the next shot showed the NTSB Public Hearing Room. The NTSB is actually located around the corner in DC from the FAA. They are not in the same building.

At no time during the NTSB hearing are the lives of people on the ground considered. If Sully had chosen to try for either La Guardia or Teterboro airports, he would also have had to consider the possible loss of life other than passengers and crew had he crashed.