I can assure you the plane never touched the bottom - the river is quite deep there as it's right where the cruise ships come in and out. In fact, the plane continued to drift south with the tide throughout the rescue. It's currently reported to be still in the water and tied up at the marina at the World Financial Center waiting for the investigators to go through it.

Big kudos should also go to the ferry captains at NY Waterway. Their main terminal is just a few blocks from where the plane went down, and they were very quick to begin a rescue operation on their own. There was also a shot of a Circle Line boat that appeared to be trying to stabilize the aircraft as it sunk lower into the water. I believe NYPD also deployed rescue swimmers from a helo very quickly - before they had boats on scene.

All in all a job well done, and a whole lot of luck. I can't imagine they cleared the George Washington Bridge by all that much on the way down. I'm sure Doug will have some interesting data to take away that might help in the future. I hope for all of us he gets to talk to the pilots and crew.