I've seen this referenced a few times in this article. Did the pilot consciously attempt to "land" in the Hudson River, or was the plane simply going down in the Hudson and the pilot was able to correct its pitch enough to land? If its the latter, I would say the autopilot could have done it better.
The pilot was directed to a nearby airport, but realized he could not make it. He then looked out the window and evaluated his options on where to land, and selected the Hudson.
There's nothing 'simple' about landing an airplane in water that is not designed for it, especially a glider.
Hehe...the Hudson airplane did not land in the river by default. The default choice in New York would have been to take out a few city blocks. This incident was a textbook example of good decisionmaking under pressure.
Most computer guys don't realize this, but you can't save the state of a flight. Most decisions are mostly permanent once made. And some, like for instance all decisions made on an aircraft with no engines, are completely irreversible. So if you don't make the right choice on the first try, you have to live with the wrong choice. At low altitudes under visual flight, a pilot makes multiple such decisions a minute. In an emergency, this number would be a lot higher; on the order of once every few seconds.