Everyone knows the story of Sully ditching his plane in the Hudson, and I was always under the impression that he was the first to successfully ditch a plane in water. I've heard that it's been attempted before with little success, with the famous example cited being the
Ethiopian plane that was hijacked in 1996 and ran out of fuel, ditched near a beach with only 50 survivors of the 175 on board.
I am wondering why I never previously heard of
Garuda Indonesia flight 421 that lost both engines AND THE APU in 2002 and ditched in a river with almost no instruments, which resulted in a single fatality of the 60 people on board. I would think that it's a much bigger feat to land a plane in water with zero electrical power than with a working APU, although they did lose their engines at a far higher altitude than US 1549.
Is it possible that I just never heard of them because it was in Indonesia and we tend to only celebrate local heroes?