The last communication to air traffic controllers from the pilot of US Airways 1549 was direct and to the point.

“We’re gonna be in the Hudson,” Capt. Chesley Sullenberger calmly says to controllers.

To which a disbelieving New York TRACON controller handling LaGuardia Airport departures calls to the Airbus A320, a flight given the call sign Cactus 1549.

“I’m sorry,” the controller says. “Say again Cactus?”

The time is 3:29:28 p.m. on Jan. 15. And US Airways Flight 1549 is roughly over the George Washington Bridge, heading south, both engines disabled after the jetliner hit a flock of birds following takeoff from LaGuardia less than four minutes earlier. About one minute after that last transmission from Sullenberger, a helicopter pilot over the Hudson River tells another LaGuardia airspace controller: “Looks like he’s going down.”

The transmissions are part of a dramatic package of audio recordings and transcripts of the amazing Hudson River ditching last month that were released Thursday by the Federal Aviation Administration.

In what was dubbed “The Miracle on the Hudson” all 155 passengers and crew on-board the doomed plane survived the ditching in the frigid Hudson.