The only thing else not lost forever was the data stored on the laptop, copies of which were kept on the servers of an online backup company. Epocrates uses to back up data and, uncharacteristically, Jorgensen had backed up his files the night before the flight. Six DVDs holding the data were sent to Jorgensen on Jan. 19, just four days after the crash. "I was left without an excuse to not work. It was almost too quick," he joked.

While Jorgensen is candid about not promoting any particular product, he is grateful for having not lost any data and quick to evangelize about the importance of offsite rather than just to local hard drives. Without the backup, he would have not only lost all of his business data, but a lot of personal data and photos that he kept on the lost laptop.

It was one less thing to worry about, he noted.

Normally, Jorgensen wouldn't have been on a Thursday flight out of New York, where he works three days a week sharing data on how his company's products are used with Wall Street analysts. Most weeks, Jorgensen flew home to his wife and two daughters in Charlotte on a Friday. He left early that week to get ready for his three-year-old daughter's birthday on Jan. 16.

Jorgensen thought the loud boom that resounded through the plane as it was taking on altitude out of La Guardia must have been a mid-air collision - perhaps a smaller plane grazing the US Airways Airbus A320. He never imagined a flock of Canadian geese could have caused both engines to shut down. "It wasn't like multiple hits. There was one very big boom," he said.