Georgia lottery players look to Flight 1549 for luck

The crew and passengers of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 got lucky on Thursday. So the lottery-playing citizens of Georgia reached for a bit of the same luck on Friday.

Georgia Lottery Corp. officials said the Cash 4 numbers 1-5-4-9 sold out by Friday afternoon, one day after Flight 1549 was ditched in the freezing waters of the Hudson River, five minutes after taking off from New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

The 155 passengers and crew aboard the Airbus A320 miraculously survived, and the dramatic rescue was carried live on most television networks. That apparently was inspiration enough for the Georgians who like to plunk down 50 cents or a dollar on the chance that their four numbers will come in.

Lottery players trying to play 1-5-4-9 for the 11:34 p.m. drawing were told they had been locked out of the ticket machines sometime after lunch Friday, said lottery spokesman J.B. Landroche.

“I can’t recall a similar instance here in Georgia in which one has sold out like this,” Landroche said.

The Cash 4 game pays a top prize of $5,000, and when too many people buy the same four numbers, the computers automatically begin to lock out that sequence to protect the payout.

“It would be thousands of tickets that were sold for that number for this to happen,” Landroche said.

Shutouts have happened before in the Cash 4 game, he said, but that usually occurs when too many people play what are known as “quads,” the numbers 7-7-7-7, for example.

Cash 4 midday drawings are held daily, except Sunday, and the nightly drawings take place seven days a week.

Proceeds from the lottery fund the popular HOPE scholarship program and pre-K education in Georgia.