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February 9, 2009

STEPHANIE SALTER: Multiple impressions of US Airways pilot ‘just doing his job’

By Stephanie Salter

TERRE HAUTE — Before we Americans move on to our next hero, I’d like to share some collected observations about Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III and US Airways Flight 1549.

“Sully,” as he is known to family, colleagues — and now millions of strangers — is the pilot who averted disaster Jan. 15 by putting a wounded Airbus 320 down on the Hudson River. With the help and skill of Sullenberger’s cockpit and cabin crews, all 155 people on board lived to tell the extraordinary tale.

Those of us who have never piloted jetliners were awestruck. “Miracle” became the operative word as Sullenberger’s name became a happy household word.

To those who are trained to ferry others through the sky, the reaction was much the same as the captain’s — cool, low-profile, eminently professional.

In a superb essay on politicalmaven.com, retired Reader’s Digest editor Ralph Kinney Bennett echoed thousands of Sullenberger’s colleagues.

“It is likely that we would never have heard about Mr. Sullenberger, but for that flock of birds near La Guardia,” Bennett wrote. “He would have been like thousands of other commercial pilots — exceptional men and women who go about their demanding, boring, tiring, unsung duty, hoping and indeed praying that what makes them exceptional will not be called to the fore. Most of them have memories of cockpit moments when their instincts, their training, and luck, yes, luck, got them past the shadow of death. These are the damp-brow, dry-mouth, frozen seconds they keep to themselves.”

A retired pilot friend sent me the Bennett piece — along with copies of e-mail correspondence among him, another retired captain and Sullenberger. There’s zero gushing in any of the messages, just no-nonsense congratulatory communication among pros.

Ever gracious, Sullenberger turned the compliments back on both retirees — veterans of the Korean War and F-86 fighter jets — telling them he envied their experience in the legendary Sabres.

Sullenberger is 58. Without a years-long effort by many of his colleagues, he and his exceptional know-how would be two years from being forced out of the cockpit.

Until Dec. 13, 2007, the FAA singled out pilots of U.S. passenger planes from among the world’s pool of commercial aviators, mandating their retirement at age 60. Thanks to sustained and ferocious lobbying of Congress by hundreds of people like United Airlines Capt. Barry H. Wilson (another pal; Purdue aviation, 1968), the flying public will reap the benefits of American pilots’ expertise until they reach 65.

Lucky us. According to Simon Hradecky of the Aviation Herald, Sullenberger and his first officer had all of 210 seconds from the time the Airbus flight recorder registered the loss of both engines until the black box went dead when the plane hit the Hudson.

As Bennett wrote of all commercial pilots in his online essay:

“Everyone of them has thought at one time or another about what they would do, how they would react when the buzzers sound and the lights flash and hell breaks loose above the earth. Most of them never have and never will face what Chesley Sullenberger faced — that moment when all his training, all his reading, all his instincts — all that framed and formed him since his youth — was called up instantly from the files hidden deep within him.”

Sullenberger has been adamant since “the miracle” that the training and instincts of everyone involved in the water landing and quick maritime rescue were pivotal to the outcome. An overlooked element of the success was examined by Marcy Wheeler on her Weblog, Emptywheel:

“This Miracle Brought to You by America’s Unions.”

Person by person, job by job, the Michigan-based Wheeler listed the labor union representation on display Jan. 15.

“Sullenberger is a former national committee member and the former safety chairman for the Airline Pilots Association and now represented by US Airline Pilots Association,” she wrote. “He — and his union — have fought to ensure pilots get the kind of safety training to pull off what he did [Jan. 15].”

Aiding the captain, Wheeler added, were members of the Association of Flight Attendants; the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (still alive despite being knee-capped by the Reagan administration); the Seafarers International Union, who swiftly piloted ferry boats to the downed plane; the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association; the Uniformed Firefighters Association and Uniformed Fire Officers Association.

In a reference to Senate opposition to the U.S. auto industry’s federal loan package, Wheeler wrote, “Bob Corker [Tennessee] and Richard Shelby [Alabama] like to claim that union labor is a failed business model. But I haven’t heard much about Bob Corker and Richard Shelby saving 155 people’s lives.”

Last among the Flight 1549 observations is an online column by conservative radio talk show host, Mike Gallagher. Normally not a guy to whom I resonate, Gallagher won the day describing his repulsion at a USA Today headline, “US Airways Gives Passengers On Flight $5,000 Each — Passengers Wonder, Is it Enough?”

The newspaper story quoted one passenger saying, “I just want to be made whole,” and mentioned a New York law firm that specializes in aviation lawsuits; already it has been contacted by several passengers of Flight 1549.

“Is anything ever enough anymore?” Gallagher wrote.

“It is absolutely, positively inconceivable that anyone aboard the miraculous US Airways Airbus … would expect US Airways to fork over a ton of money to them … I wonder how long it took those folks to stop thanking God for His decision to spare their lives from what should have been a fiery, horrible end before they Googled the best law firm to sue the pants off US Airways?”

Bravo. Not to minimize anyone’s trauma, but perhaps any litigation-leaning passengers should ask themselves one question before filing suit: “What would Capt. Sullenberger do?”

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

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