This amounts to saying it was a one in 10,000 performance. Once the pilot decided on the river landing (a very superior piece of judgment) I’d say his actions could have been matched by a majority of airline pilots. It’s fair to note the one conspicuous error: failure to close the ditching valve (which reduces the rate at which water can flow into the fuselage).
Given the external circumstances (basically, a large, reasonably calm stretch of water within reach and rescue vessels available) the odds of everyone surviving were probably something like 20%.
The first is true. But the large expanse of river meant there was no issue with landing short or long - the pilot could establish the correct speed and let the plane touch down where it wanted to.
Quite right. But essentially every landing is done with wings level (though not with the threat of serious damage if they aren’t quite).
I think the pilot (and the rest of the crew - don’t forget them) deserve high praise. But it’s also fair to say that their actions were within - not above and beyond - the call of duty. And to note that luck was as important as skill in the successful outcome.
It’s a big deal because of all the factors – no engines, lack of altitude, a pilot who did not panic (not all that easy), flight attendants who didn’t panic and who managed to keep the passengers from panicking, the availability of help, and much more. The fact that no one was killed involved a perfect combination of skill and luck; there were just too many ways things could have gone wrong.
Maybe that’s how life should be, but it almost never is. Life is funny that way.
Making air travel safe has been a goal for a century and has occupied the careers of hundreds of thousands of smart, dedicated people. Few things in the world receive so much scrutiny. Things go wrong. We know they’ll go wrong, so we build other things in to pick up the slack. You could fly a hundred times and have them all be routine. It should be uneventful. If there’s an event, it shouldn’t become a concern, the concern shouldn’t become an incident, and that should never reach the level of an emergency. There’s a huge margin of safety in the system, these folks used up every bit of it and walked away.
If I ever meet this crew in a bar (off duty, of course) the drinks are on me.
I’m not prepared to say that the crash isn’t that big of a deal–I think it’s easy to underestimate how unlikely this happy outcome was given the facts leading up to it (and I could be persuaded that it’s easy to overestimate how likely worse outcomes were).
But I’m a little uncomfortable with some of the “these guys are heros and we need to glorify them at every opportunity” stuff. Not so much posts on a message board, or appearances on 60 Minutes, but the pilot and crew got special seats at the Inauguration and at the Super Bowl, and that doesn’t thrill me.
Was it newsworthy? Yes.
But for the love of god news media have you ever heard the term beating a dead horse?
This was a big story but should have been reported on and finished in about 48 hours. It’s now almost a month later and they’ve dragged this thing on and on and on. Let it go already.
There are a lot of unhappy news stories going on right now. It’s good to hear something good for a change.
Just before the 60 Minutes spot on the crew, I sat through a half hour of promos about an upcoming Howard K. Stern interview (Anna Nicole Smith story). Hell, they’re still talking about Jon Benet Ramsey 13 years later!!!
If the news wants to flog a feel-good story for a few weeks, it’s ok with me.
Sully cleared the George Washington Bridge by 900 feet. That is a very large, very busy bridge. If he had hit it, more lives would have been lost.
The landing could have been a huge disaster with hundreds of lives on the plane, on the river, and on the ground lost. It wasn’t, and that makes it a very big deal.
If the 9/11 hijackers had hit a birdstrike over NYC, would it have been a big deal?
Well what’s your definition of a Hero then? Who would YOU give the special seats to and all? As I’m hard pressed to see who could better qualify as a Hero other than keeping a calm head and saving the lives of others by pulling off a miraculous once in a lifetime sort of task and doing it perfectly.
I’d rather he take it than Jessica Simpson or the next elderly Football player (as much as I love the “heros” of Football from back in the Day, I doubt any of them would complain as to having this guy getting to take their spot.
I didn’t think people were making a big thing of it. I just thought the reason it was such a big deal was that we live in a really awful world if a flock of geese can bring down an airplane. How is it that more planes don’t go down?
Yup. The big deal is not that everybody did what they should do. The big deal is that plane loosing all engines that low over densely populated area could very easily become multi-hundred-victims catastrophe despite everybody doing their best.
Quite right that hitting the bridge would have been catastrophic. But 900’ is a more than ample margin - aircraft clear buildings by less than this on routine landings. And had he not had the height to fly over the bridge, there’s actually ample room to fly underneath it.
IOW, hitting the bridge would have been one of the worst pieces of flying ever. Failing to do so was a good thing, but not worthy of great praise.
A pilot like Sully pretty much only has his knowlege and general flying experience to make something like this happen…it’s not like he’s had a lot of chances to practice such a maneuver. I remember reading once about studies that show how important practice is in this kind of physical test of skill…the fact that he got it exactly right the one time he did it is just amazing to me.
Wasnt Sully an ex fighter pilot who DID train for water ditchings? Secondly wasn’t it a blessing that this happened on take off and the plane was fully fueled? Did it not make the aircraft more buoyant
That, frankly, makes it MORE of a story and not less. This wasn’t a “guy using his training,” he was using training almost nobody else has. This was the right man for the job – it’s a stroke of gigantic luck it happened to a flight he was piloting and not someone else.
WHY did he have that training? Because a few people take things seriously and put in forethought and effort when there ISN’T an immediate crisis. Very few.
As for the OP, the supposition that it’s to be expected that everyone is competent and will do their jobs correctly in a crisis smacks of, frankly, inexperience. Are you young? Have you been paying attention to, well, everything else in the news? Hurricane Katrina? The wars (hell, any wars)? The Space Shuttles? Gaza? Wall Street? Chernobyl?
My perspective may be skewed a bit because I work in a safety agency (although I am not a safety engineer). I agree that competence, good decision-making, and not fucking up in a crisis are to be desired. But they’re all too rare.
What was the amazing physical skill here? Once he’d made the (absolutely correct) decision to go for the river, he had to configure the plane for ditching (which he got right except for closing the ditching valve), maintain specified airspeeds (a rather basic pilot skill) and touch down wings level (ditto).