NY WELCOMES AND CHEERS POLISH PILOT WHO SAFE-LANDED IN
WARSAW
NEWS from THE POLISH AMERICAN CONGRESS
DOWNSTATE NEW YORK DIVISION
177 Kent St., Brooklyn, N.Y. 11222 – (718) 349-9689
Brooklyn, N.Y. .. After a rousing welcome, cheers and numerous bouquets of flowers presented to LOT Airlines pilot Captain Tadeusz Wrona at Greenpoint’s Polish & Slavic Center, officers of the Downstate New York Division of the Polish American Congress met him privately to offer him their personal
congratulations.
Shown here greeting Capt. Wrona are (from left to right): Vice President John Czaplinski; President Frank Milewski; VP Chet Szarejko; Capt. Wrona; VP Chris Rybkiewicz and Bozena Kaminski, Executive Director of the
Polish & Slavic Center.
Photo by Polish American Congress
Capt. Wrona has received worldwide acclaim for safely belly landing his Boeing 767 after the plane’s landing gear completely malfunctioned during a flight from Newark, N.J. to Warsaw’s Chopin Airport. All 231 passengers came through without injury.
Adding to the repeated applause and cheers his admirers in the packed auditorium gave Capt. Wrona, New York City Comptroller John Liu and Assemblyman Joseph Lentol conveyed New York’s congratulations and best wishes. Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, in Washington at the time, added her own citation recognizing his remarkable achievement.
Many compare Capt. Wrona’s masterful landing on the ground of Warsaw’s Chopin Airport to the landing of American Airways’ “Sulley” Sullenberger on the surface of the Hudson River in 2009.
That event was popularly characterized as “the miracle on the Hudson.”
VP John Czaplinski’s brother-in-law was one of the passengers on the Polish plane and feels Wrona’s landing could rightfully be called “the miracle on All Saints Day” since it happened on November1st.
This is not the first time the Polish Americans of Greenpoint paid tribute to a Polish pilot, according to Czaplinski.
He recalled how the Polish American Congress celebrated the 81st birthday of the late Col. Francis “Gabby” Gabreski in 2000 together with the children of the Maria Konopnicka Polish Supplementary School at the Polonaise Terrace.
Col. Gabreski, a Polish American from Oil City, PA., distinguished himself as America’s top World War II. air ace in Europe with 31 destroyed German planes to his credit.