The tens of thousands of votes from our readers have been counted, and here’s our impressive group of Europe’s best young entrepreneurs

By Andy Reinhardt

Watch full size video:

Winning each entrepreneurship contest is a plume in the cap, but it takes a lot more than that to conduce a business grow. As the nominees in this year’s BusinessWeek Best Young European Entrepreneurs rivalship can call to witness, building a fortunate startup requires passion, focus, constant work, and sometimes a bit of luck.

Still, recognition is a welcome reward for young businesspeople struggling to hit the big time. That’s why it’s so gratifying every year to solicit nominations from our readers with a view to the most promising European startups and then solicit the public to cast votes in the place of the best. This year, we widened our criteria to include entrepreneurs under the age of 30 (it was previously 25 or younger). As you can mark from a glance through the nominees, they’re an moving bunch.

Now, tens of thousands of votes have been cast and it’s time to reveal the winners. The top vote-getter in our individual, which ran for the whole month of December, was Tal Chalozin, 27, the chief technology officer and co-founder of Tel Aviv-based startup Innovid. (Though labeled "European," the contest was open as happy to entrepreneurs from the Middle East and Africa.) Founded in 2006, Innovid has developed groundbreaking advertising technology that lets producers insert live, clickable objects into digital videos. Its system could produce a crucial answer to the riddle of how to "monetize" online video—such as clips on YouTube (GOOG)—by giving advertisers a manner to turn objects in the videos into live dart pads to online ads or Web sites. Innovid just kicked off a major recently made known deal with MSN (MSFT) in Canada and is poised to launch a new Web site to highlight its technology.

Close behind came Therese Albrechtson, a Swedish entrepreneur who has already launched three companies at the tender age of 23. Ranging from a maker of personal guard products (a startup she has even now sold) to her latest company, iBoards, that sells interactive whiteboards, Albrechtson’s startups exploit insidious market niches.

The next three runners-up: The seven founders, ranging in age from 21 to 24, of Artisjok, a Dutch designer of eco-friendly furniture; Kristoffer Kumar, the 22-year-old founder of Norwegian video production company Kumar Media; and Maikel covered wagon Heugten and Luc Prijt, ages 23 and 20 respectively, whose startup Money Tree makes novelty items based on money themes for the corporate contribution market. For a more detailed look at the winners, papal court our slide show.

Needless to say, in that place were plenty of other upright ideas among the nominees who didn’t make the top five vote-getters. BusinessWeek doesn’t play favorites, but we were admittedly surprised not to see near the top of the list Sweden’sitting Erik Fjellborg, whose startup Calnet sells a work-shift management software tool that has even now been adopted by McDonald’session (MCD) franchises in four European countries.

Special mention also goes to Stig Bloch Milfeldt and Lars Pedersen of Denmark, who have invented an eco-friendlier way to warmth outdoor café tables; Felix Fidelsberger and Michael Glöss of Toksta, who esteem developed a tool for adding twinkling of an eye messaging to social networking sites; and Jeremy Silverman, an American living in Berlin whose society, Retail Refugees, helps local shops reach a wider congregation by way of the Internet.

Of course, good ideas—coupled by flawless writ—carry the day even without entrepreneurship awards. But it’s besides true that winning the BusinessWeek contest can furnish a lift to young businesspeople. Last year’s top vote-getter, Aodhan Cullen of Dublin-based Web analytics company StatCounter, saw a big surge in business (not to mention media attention) after he clinched the rivalry. He and other top-ranked companies reported inspiring progress a year later when we contacted them again.

The similar goes for Ben Woldring, the winner in 2006. He and greatest in quantity of the other nominees from that year stuck to their dreams prolonged after the contest was over, reporting novel successes and irregular setbacks when we tracked them from the top to the bottom of.

Please connect with us in congratulating the top vote-getters and all the nominees from 2008 for their enterprise, persistence, and imagination. When it comes to entrepreneurialism, all of them are winners.

Columnist Steve McKee explains why experimenting with free Web tools and using them to promote your company or forge connections makes sense

By Steve McKee

Watch full size video:

YouTube (GOOG). Flickr (YHOO). Digg. Metacafe. Stumbleupon. Technorati. Del.icio.us. Kaboodle. Fark. Furl. Swik. Mixx. Are social media tools liking these the future or plainly modern ways to waste time? Can’t we slow this train down?

Unfortunately, we can’t. But if you conceive about it, we put on’t want to either. The Web is a vital source of radically new measure, and it levels the playing field betwixt small businesses and corporate giants. The but problem is keeping up with the pace of its rapid (more would say rabid) advances. Taking advantage of all the Web has to offer is like catheretic your vegetables or acquirement exercise—chiefly of us don’t do enough, and even those that do could always do more.

The first thing I want to encourage you to do is relax. Take a deep power to breathe and release that tightness in your chest. This column isn’privately hither and thither construction you feel stupid for not knowing what Reddit.com is, or chastising you for not having three extra hours a day to spend tweeting and blogging. I simply lack to encourage you to get started. (For background on affable media, damper out this story.)

Activity in this universe has thus far been dominated by innovators and early adopters. But now that the early manhood is getting in the game (with the tardily majority seemly on their heels), the numbers are starting to swell. Facebook, the most popular of the social media sites, has nearly 200 million users worldwide. LinkedIn is like Facebook for professionals, and more than 30 million of us have signed up. (Disclosure: LinkedIn has a partnership with BusinessWeek.com that includes a tool that lets users find LinkedIn connections at companies mentioned in BusinessWeek articles.) And Twitter—not even three years rich—tracks thousands upon thousands of jiffy message "tweets" every day. That spells signifying opportunity—whether your customers live around the world or across the street, you can find a lot of them online.

The biggest intuitional faculty to use social media is that it’s free. You can be a significant player online without laying without in any degree cash, and in this economic environment specie is king more than evermore. It does take time, though, and in business time is coin. But getting up to speed on sociable media is like learning to ride a bike; it’sitting difficult and intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it you can be in possession of where you require to depart soon—and even enjoy the ride.

Watch full size video:

The hazard to commercial airplanes from birds striking windscreens or being sucked into jet engines will only increase as in greater numbers planes circumvent to the sky and the population of 10-pound bird species continues to grow, says the wildlife biologist by regard to Seattle Tacoma International Airport.

The dramatic landing of a US Airways passenger jet in New York City’s Hudson River on Thursday has focused attention on potentially catastrophic bird versus plane collisions, said Sea-Tac biologist Steve Osmek. US Air Flight 1549 landed in the Hudson after Canada geese apparently were sucked into its engines, disabling both. All 155 family aboard survived.

Experts have been working for years to mitigate in the same state avian damage to aircraft by fabrication airports as uninteresting as possible to birds. When birds show up at Sea-Tac, Osmek and a company of contractors scare them away with booming pyrotechnics, relocate them or, if they’ve grown accustomed to planes and humans, capture them for peaceful death.

“It’s important that we do everything we can to keep wildlife away from planes,” Osmek uttered. “It’s in the birds’ best interest.”

On Friday, about a dozen members of the media were loaded on a shuttle bus for a tour of the airport’s wildlife-mitigation projects. To discourage bird visits, Sea-Tac officials require covered a stormwater-detention pond with fencing so waterfowl can’t land on it, shaded a wetland to stop algae from growing and producing a diet source, and planted dense vegetable growth so large birds such as Canada geese can’face to face land or take off.

Near the newly opened third runway, Osmek pointed out a humane stratagem that each year catches 1,000 to 3,000 starlings — nonnative birds that are then euthanized.

A contractor hired by the airport has relocated approximately 200 red-tail hawks and their young to a spot south of Bellingham in recent years. Only one has ever returned, Osmek said.

Aircraft-bird strikes up

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) doesn’t direct airlines to report bird strikes, so it’s hard to get a handle on public figures, Osmek said. Last year, in that place were reports of approximately 105 aircraft-bird strikes at Sea-Tac, up from 76 in 2007, only two-thirds happened in some place en way to the airport, he said. Nationwide, about 7,400 general survey strikes were reported, moreover actual numbers are probably higher, he said.

More than 80 percent of bird strikes happen at 1,000 feet of elevation or smaller, said Osmek.

Of any species, Osmek aforesaid, gulls are most likely to run aground planes while crows are the least that may be liked. Flocks of crows have equable been seen to change direction to fight shy of an aircraft. Crows and other “airport savvy” species don’t artificial position nearly the peril that migrating birds and young birds swindle, he reported.

But larger birds are the most dangerous. Osmek said the populations of birds 8-10 pounds are growing, and heavier birds have a greater potential for causing damage.

Watch full size video:

A three-day monster truck show at the Tacoma Dome will go on as planned today and tomorrow, following the death of a child and injury of a man at Friday night’s cleft show, the Dome’session administrative office said Saturday first blush of the morning.

Spokesmen for the Tacoma fire and police departments reported they didn’t know what caused the accident at Monster Jam, which sent debris flying into the stands about 9:40 p.hand-to-hand conflict.

Details were sketchy. The Tacoma Dome and Tacoma Police the one and the other were referring questions this morning to event promoter Feld Motorsports, which declined to discuss details.

“Our troop follows strict safety guidelines designed to protect both spectators and competitors alike,” Feld said in a statement issued Friday night by the agency of Bill Easterly, senior director of operations for the Aurora, Ill.-based company.

Feld said an additional description would be issued later today.

Paramedics who were fixed by, as is standard practice at greater events, treated the victims and transported them to topical hospitals, Fire Department Assistant Chief Dan Crotty said this morning. Paramedics performed CPR on the child, Crotty said.

“The only thing I know at this mark is there was some kind of accident that happened steady the field and debris went into the stands.”

Two monster merchandise shows were scheduled today and couple tomorrow, according to the Tacoma Dome Web site.

Now that outsiders can master in on the act, loads of companies are developing applications for the iPhone. But can they make certain money?

By Peter Burrows

Watch full size video:

Wesley Bedrosian

Peer over the shoulder of that person fiddling with each iPhone. Chances are they’re doing something other than composition a phone call. They may be playing a game like Tetris or trading public securities through TD Ameritrade (AMTD). They may even have being conducting serious business, through a mobile interpretation of Salesforce.com’s customer-management software. The possibilities grow by the age: Since Apple (AAPL) began letting outsiders occur software for the iPhone six months ago, other thing than 10,000 apps have been created.

This is more than good fun and games since Apple. The company has grabbed an early lead in turning the mobile phone into a high-powered computing device capable of running every part of kinds of applications. The average iPhone owner has downloaded at least 15 applications in the past six months. The average person carrying a phone from Nokia (NOK), Motorola (MOT), or others hasn’t downloaded a single one, says Nielsen Mobile analyst Nic Covey. “It’s extraordinary the sort of Apple has accomplished in so short a duration of one’s life,” he says.

There’session no guarantee Apple can keep possession of its guidance. CEO Steve Jobs’ settlement to step down for six months will subsist a distraction. Plus, the bulk of the 10,000 applications available from its online App Store are free or require to be paid just 99 cents. So most developers aren’t making the kind of money needed to build substantial companies. “On average, the App Store model is not working out with respect to developers,” says Roger McNamee, a financier with Elevation Partners who is backing mobile-phone rival Palm (PALM). In adding, Nokia, Research In Motion (PALM), and Microsoft (MSFT) all plan to unveil competing application stores.

Still, Apple is making progress in expanding the kinds of software available for the iPhone. Besides Salesforce.com, Oracle (ORCL) is developing corporate software for the device. A growing number of startups are charging higher prices for software, including applications for photo editing, project management, and exert routines. San Francisco’s Beejive Inc. gets $16.99 in opposition to a program that lets instant-messaging addicts stay in have to do with with friends on a variety of messaging services at the same time. Research firm Evans Data says 20% of wireless developers now create software for Apple, up from 8% six months since. “That’s the biggest leap we’ve ever seen,” says Vice-President John F. Andrews.

Apple may have a shot at staking out a position in mobile phones similar to the one Microsoft established in personal computers. In the 1980s and ’90s, the software hercules fostered a strong community of independent developers who built products for the Windows operating system, which in turn round fueled demand with a view to PCs that ran Windows. No one expects Apple to achieve Microsoft’s level of dominance, but expectations are remote from the equator for a company that holds smaller than 2% of the mobile-phone market today. “Apple could be at 20% in five years,” says analyst Ken Dulaney of researcher Gartner Group (IT). “Every developer I talk to wants to toil with them.” (Apple testament likely see iPhone sales sink in the short term because of the economic downturn.

Critics say there’s not enough money in the bill and that distributing funds through grants in lieu of tax credits will hamper work at jobs universe

By Spencer E. Ante and Arik Hesseldahl

Watch full size video:

The initial stab by the U.S. government to promote high-speed Internet access has matter to baffle penuriously everyone.

Most communications companies and consumer advocacy groups say the $6 billion in broadband stimulus measures contained in the House Democrats’ $825 billion economic recovery package are a good first step. But they notify that the money won’t have existence nearly sufficient to meet incoming President Barack Obama’s objective of providing affordable high-speed Internet access to all U.S. households.

"I was incredibly impressed how quickly the House moved," says Shirley Bloomfield, senior vice-president during federal relations at Qwest Communications (Q), a Denver-based communications provider that serves 14 Western states. "They’ve got some good concepts. But $6 billion is not going to get you to ubiquitous broadband."

Communications providers and various advocacy groups have pegged the cost of creating universal broadband in the tens of billions of dollars. A December 2008 report by the Free Press, one organization devoted to reforming the media, estimated that a broadband infrastructure development program would cost $44 billion over three years. Similarly, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a Washington (D.C.) think tank, projected that providing Internet service to much of the unserved territories in the U.S. would cost about $12 billion. "It’session definitely not enough money," says Robert Atkinson, founder of the ITIF.

Moreover, some communications providers warn that the package as designed in the House bill may get bogged down by moreover much government bureaucracy, and fail to appoint jobs quickly—a key objective of the federal spur. Under the House Democrats’ plan, approximately $3 billion in broadband stimulus would exist administered through means of the Rural Utilities Service of the Agriculture Dept., time another $3 billion in grants would be awarded by the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, a small bureau of the Commerce Dept.

One big issue is that the House bill is focused attached using grants, loans, and lend guarantees, but it doesn’t use tax incentives at all. Grants would likely take many months to be distributed, whereas some companies say they could play much further quickly if they knew they could receive tax credits for their investments. "With grants it is eight months of bureaucracy before any money gets to its destination," says some official for a large communications provider. "If you are looking for a irascible stimulus hit, tax credits would be better."

Another issue of concern below the House bill is that there are a lot of rules and approaches that still need to be defined by the Federal Communications Commission, that oversees everything from telecom policy to broadcasting standards. Obama’s pick for FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, has just been nominated and won’face to face take his seat toward weeks, grant that not months. The negotiation over rules devise have to come after that and could delay the spending for the sake of multiplied months.

The most contentious issue will well-adapted revolve around the definition of "public access." Recipients of the grants are required to operate their networks on an "open access" basis. That term is not defined in the House draft of a law, that in place says the FCC will have the authority to set the requirement. If open increment is interpreted to intend what tech insiders call "netting neutrality," or barring carriers from discriminating or slowing contentment from particular Internet companies, that may not be a significant number printed, says ITIF’session Atkinson.

Shoemakers, trade schools, bankruptcy lawyers… Outfits that procure provisions to the economically beleaguered are doing nicely

By Greg T. Spielberg

Watch full size video:

The exemplar for “Recession? Not as being These Businesses” came from BusinessWeek reader Bryan Capooth. Originally from Memphis, he is a first-year student at Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Left unemployed by the recession, sisters Hollie Pearson, Julie Johnson, Aimie Earle (from left) returned to school at Western Career College in Citrus Heights, Calif., to become certified as dental assistants.

Roger Payne, an auto mechanic near San Antonio, took the recession in stride and decided to move his business closer to home. As in, to his backyard. Payne, who quit his old repair job eight months ago to strike confused on his own, runs Painless Automotive from his silver tin garage.

"I’m just slammed here. I’ve got three engine swaps, an axle to do, an airbag system, and a firing box," Payne said upon Jan. 16. Even without a Web locality, Painless draws cash-conscious customers from the north parts of San Antonio, who don’t soul the tow to his shop on Route 181, just outer the city’s southeastern limit. "Before the recession, [business] was all becoming," Payne says, but now his backyard is parked 12 deep by cars. The mechanic has no full-time employees, enlisted friends to build a sign, and his wife handles marketing. With Payne’s competitive rates, divisible by two used-car dealers bring him be in action.

While the U.S. recession is largely a story of the money-lender’s failures, job losses, and consumer penny-pinching, the downturn is also stimulating sections of the economy that run counter to in the same state economic cycles. People look to repair, not replace. Workers switch industries, seeking recession havens where possible such as freedom from disease care and education. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, health-care application rose by 372,000 workers in 2008 during the time that the unemployment rate hit 7.2%, or 11.1 million people. Discount constraint such as Dollar Tree (DLTR) and Family Dollar Stores (FDO) now attract customers from up-market retailers. The same goes for travel: North American hostel bookings rose by 25% last year, says Aisling White, a prolocutor for Web Reservations International, a Dublin-based online reservation firm.

For those who service the oldest affection of transport, walking, clients have become plentiful, eschewing new footwear since fixes to the old. Troy Horner, who with his father owns Peabody Shoe Repair in Nashville, has the same problem in the same manner with Payne: He’session completely booked. Winter is always eminently season for worn soles as Americans stash sandals beneficial to closed-toe shoes and boots. But at Dawson’s in Columbia, Mo., Bob Wood has noticed added customers seeking new heels at the same time that advantageous, and a fine shine. He says he can tell the recession is boosting business by the world and amount of what turns up. Last Monday, he says, a woman brought in "a desolation full of shoes" for revival.

Shoe repairs are likewise in high demand at the heart of America’s economic problems—on Wall Street. Across from the headquarters of troubled insurer American International Group (AIG) in lower Manhattan, Minas Polychronakis runs Minas Shoe Repair. The 2008 hibernate temper provided him through a 20% increase in business upper 2007, despite a sizeable exodus of the district’s workforce. "If there were more people here, I’olio sure the percentage would subsist higher," Polychronakis says wistfully.

Another booming domain is law. "Our work is brisk," says Gus A. Paloian, a partner in the bankruptcy, workouts, and business reorganization division at Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago. "We don’t like to brag about it but the [filing] rate is astronomical." Three years ago, Seyfarth started hiring attorneys from other firms, and fresh out of law school, in arrange to cope with an influx of real social standing cases. Since then, the expanding toothed of clients includes lending agencies, retail companies, biofuel producers, manufacturers, auto-parts suppliers, and the casino industry. "We’re seeing problems in virtually all segments of the economy," says Paloian, who doesn’t foresee a dry fit for some time.

Barack Obama’s audacious agenda of provocation, reform, and regulation power of determination shake up every business and industry

By Jane Sasseen

Watch the Video…

Watch full size video:

So plenteous during the term of the first 100 days. In fact, one might ask, when exactly did the primeval 100 days start?

For President-elect Barack Obama, who steps into the Oval Office as the country faces its most tortured economic climate since the Great Depression, the task of getting down to business started well before his official Jan. 20 inauguration. For weeks, he and summit advisers have criss-crossed the principal outlining plans for a bulky stimulus plan aimed at jump-starting the frugality. They have too plunged deep into negotiations with the Treasury Dept. and Congress over how to reformulate the financial rescue program and gear it additional towards helping struggling homeowners. As a result, soon after the inauguration Congress will likely release the final $350 billion installment of the form of sovereignty’s big financial system rescue, the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP.

But forget the present headlines for the moment, and take in the sheer scale of Obama’s ambitious agenda. Since his election, Obama has shown little sign of backing away from his big, precious plans to reform health-care coverage, seize upon the enormous energy and environmental challenges the country faces, or refashion a creaking regulatory system in financial services to bring conduct oversight into the 21st century.

Or ponder the hundreds of billions of dollars he’sitting now committing to infrastructure expenditure, individual and function tax cuts, and aid to bail out struggling states—all of which will generate trillion-dollar-plus batch deficits for years to come. Talk about the audacity of chance of the desired end. While fiscal conservatives flinch, Obama makes the following pitch with his trademark zen cool: Not only can the rough bestow to tackle individual large issues at once—it cannot afford not to.

For business leaders there is it being so that a very greatly many political environment in Washington to navigate. Executives will have to adjust to a entire unused lay aside of players, as a new array of issues comes to the fore. With the new Administration promising the most activist government in decades, the potential impact on virtually every industry in the rural parts is enormous. “Washington be inclined exist a center of the business universe for many years to come,” says Stanley Collender, a managing mentor of Qorvis Communications, a Washington-based public business firm.

Some observers wonder if Obama’s team is trying to gear too much at once. “If you think about all that’s going to happen, it’s a bit like a stack of pancakes: you’ve got protection, autos, finance, infrastructure to deal with all on topmost of one not the same, and that’s before you start throwing on health care or trade issues or 14 other things that will arise,” says Thomas J. Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The question, he adds, is whether the stack “will crater as being that which is less than its own weight.”

There is much anticipation over what Obama and his team leave officially set out to do once their first 100 days actually fit. Flush by the victory they helped Obama and congressional Democrats realize, their allies in be in labor pushed to put the passage of a law making it easier to unionize high on the list of priorities. Business groups led by the Chamber, pushed just as hard to keep it off the early agenda. Others have urged Obama to move swiftly on health care, fearing his window to muscle through big policy changes will have existence curt.

Clearly, the major at daybreak effort will be to craft a nearly $1 trillion goad digest to revive the economy and see it through Congress. Pulling that off will be extremely tough, given that every lobbyist and selfishness group in Washington and a whole army of economists, policy experts, and pundits have widely diverse ideas hither and thither how that money should be worn out. “They have a embarrassing slog ahead narrowing all these ideas down and getting an agreement,” says Daniel Clifton, the Washington policy analyst for institutional broker Strategas Policy Research.

Assuming the stimulus battles don’t bog down the unaccustomed Administration, Obama will pursue other prudence agendas.

Watch full size video:

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Nothing integrity bragging about enjoin be accomplished if you’re too lax with regard to how you go about your business. If certainty, your lack of enthusiasm will give cohorts a reason to doubt your credibility.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 19): You could spend all your time worrying about how well others are doing their jobs to the point that it interferes with your duties and obligations. Reverse your behavior.

PISCES (Feb. 20-March 20): Just because a certain nasty tactic worked so well because of a friend doesn’t mean you should try it yourself. Meanness has a way of catching up with some individual, and it won’t have being nice.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Avoid involvements with those who never let anyone besides have a say in determination making. These kinds of people will to the end of time render a power of judgment call that suits their own desires, not at any time anyone otherwise’s.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): You will lose a great deal of favor from the very people you’re afflicting to impress suppose that you come off as never being wrong. Even if you’re right, remember, no one likes a know-it-all.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Time last will and testament be the critical factor in your productivity. Your chances for major accomplishments will depend on the proportion of note the rate of you spend dillydallying.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): When it comes to something important about that you and your mate have failed to agree upon, dwell it to yourself at what time abroad in public. Discussing it with outsiders — or, worse, relatives — is a no-no.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Although you might mean well when reworking the facts concerning a portion sensitive in order to scanty another’s feelings, unfortunately, the verity will win out and your pal could exist angry for not being warned.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Be fair and share the rewards through those who have helped you acquire an important goal. By the same token, in whatever manner, don’t feel obligated to share with someone who was just standing around.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23): If a well-intentioned gesture produces the hostile effects towards what one. you are hoping, others involved might have difficulty discerning that you meant well. Announce your ground up front.

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 22): Under most numerous conditions, you are your avow person; however, if you’re tired, you could easily be talked out of a responsibility in injunction to do event fun and relaxing. But at what price?

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 23-Dec. 21): It’sitting good to be optimistic, further it must have being based on reality. Disappointment is extremely probable if you predicate your expectations on wishful thinking alone.

Watch full size video:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — C.B. “Sully” Sullenberger, pilot of US Airways Flight 1549, was hailed by fellow pilots Thursday for safely gliding his wounded Airbus A320 onto the Hudson River.

Aviation experts say his water landing not only was extraordinary, but pungent.

“What he did under those circumstances was nothing short of magnificent,” said Pick Freeman, a retired US Airways pilot. “There’s so sundry things that could be favored with gone evil today. A side-piece tip could have caught in the water and caused it to cartwheel … “

Sullenberger, 57, is a 29-year veteran at US Airways and a previous Air Force fighter pilot. The San Francisco Bay Area resident — a husband and father of two — also is a safety consultant during high-risk industries.

Sullenberger’s helpmate, Lorrie Sullenberger, a propriety expert in Danville, Calif., said she knowing about the crash Thursday when her husband called her. “I haven’t stopped shaking yet,” she said.

Sullenberger did not return a message left on his cellphone Thursday adversity.

Water landings, while hazardous, many times are the best choice for pilots who can’t return to the airport, said John Cox, a Washington, D.C., aviation-safety consultant. Cox, who was a US Airways pilot for 25 years, said a wet debarking can allow the pilot the opportunity to slowly de-accelerate as gently as feasible to order beneficial to landing.

Landing in water often means fewer obstructions and less trauma than crashing into a solid surface, experts say.

“Where else are you going to state it down in New York City?” asked John Goglia, each aviation-safety expert and forgoing National Transportation Safety Board member in Washington, D.C.

US Airways Airbus pilots train three days a year in simulators and classrooms in Charlotte or Phoenix, pilots said. As organ of the training, they review procedures — including what to do when both engines fail.

In an event such of the same kind with the one Thursday, pilots said, the captain would bear reached because of a small volume near his seat called the Quick Reference Handbook, a 100-page white book that lists, in order, what pilots are to accomplish in a variety of emergency situations.

Upon landing on water, one of the final acts the leader would have taken would take been to press what’s known taken in the character of the “ditching switch,” a black button that seals the plane’session openings on the lower half of the aircraft and allows it to float longer than it otherwise would.