Posted on 11/24/2009 4:03:38 AM PST by tlb
“Fly by Wire” isn’t muckraking, exactly. Mr. Langewiesche doesn’t dispute the events of Jan. 15, 2009, when US Airways Flight 1549 successfully ditched on the Hudson River. Nor does he dispute that the flight’s pilot, Chesley B. Sullenberger III, a k a Sully, is,...a “superb pilot.”
But Mr. Langewiesche does bang a few light dents into Sully’s hero aura. What the public doesn’t understand, he writes in “Fly by Wire,” is the extent to which advances in aviation and digital technology have made pilots almost superfluous, perhaps even “the weak link in flight.” Mr. Sullenberger’s airplane, an Airbus A320, was nearly capable of guiding itself gently to the ground, even after losing both of its engines.
No knock against Sully, he suggests, but almost any decent pilot could have done it.
Mr. Langewiesche, the author of “American Ground” (2002) and “The Outlaw Sea” (2004) and a pilot himself, seems annoyed that Mr. Sullenberger has yet to praise publicly his Airbus plane and its sophisticated design. He seems annoyed, too, that Mr. Sullenberger has spoken of the problems of automation failure since his flight, while his own plane’s automation “had emphatically not failed.”
“He was no Charles Lindbergh, seeking to make history, no Chuck Yeager breaking the speed of sound,” Mr. Langewiesche writes. But he crashed during a slump in the American mood, and overnight he was transformed into a national hero, at a time when people were hungry for one.”
This book’s true hero — this will be an additional insult to some of Sully’s admirers — is a Frenchman, a former test and fighter pilot named Bernard Ziegler
In the 1970s and ’80s, working for Airbus, Mr. Ziegler and his colleagues perfected a revolutionary system known as “fly-by-wire control,”... to make almost perfect flying machines.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I have grave doubts as to whether other pilots would have done the same.
And Sully had a special skill....a glider pilot.
Nice plane...but it needs a good pilot...and needed one with "the right stuff" that day.
How about that Airbus that went down in the Atlantic on its way from Brazil to Europe?
Yeah, sure, whatever! Go Sully!
I wonder if the Times would have printed this farce if the pilot had been named Abdul.
I know quite a number of airline pilots. As a group of people, they are quite intelligent, with many of them having been military/combat pilots.
What a load, Sully didn't "crash" the Airbus. kind of get the impression that this Langewiesche wishes it were him that landed the plane on the river.
That Airbus fly by wire worked real well on the plane that went down off Brazil a couple months ago.
No autopilot could have landed that plane on that river and saved all souls aboard.
This pure BS. The Airbus did not make the decision—under extreme stress—to ditch in the Hudson R. when it became apparent the aircraft could not sustain sufficient altitude to make it to an airport. The pilot did. And the plane did not fly itself, barely missing the GW Bridge, to the river landing. The Pilot did. The plane most certainly did not maneuver, in a nose up attitude, just before making contact with the water—assuring that the aircraft would not bury itself in the river. The pilot did.
I’m not a pilot. Anyone else out there want to weigh in?
All of this was accomplished under severe stress. This is pure CYA by the European Airbus cheerleaders to cover up Airbus flaws. The pilot “almost redundant”? That’s a huge “almost”.
Anything to minimize individual accomplishment and achievement, especially from an American.
Had he been a transgendered tree worshiper, the story wouldn’t have been written.
Bite Me.
Or Tyrone. Or Guillermo. Wouldn’t want to offend them would we?
Sully himself does not believe he was a hero.
A hero is made by doing something for others selflessly....what Sully did was self-preservation.
EVERY pilot in the world would have tried to make a bad situation into a survivable situation if they were sitting in that left seat.
There is no “hero” here.
Did the plane do well? Yes, it was designed to handle a water landing, but so is every other commercial aircraft out there.
With regard to fly-by-wire, yes it is an incredible achievement, making pilots nearly pointless (we already know planes can be flown remotely and commercial planes will be flown remotely in the future).
NEARLY capable of guiding itself gently to the ground?
So Sully WAS the difference between a successful ditching versus and an unpredictable disaster!
Give the Airbus the Nobel Peace Prize ... oh, wait a minute. It was already given to another empty vessel.
That was the 1st thing I thought of! Some sort of computer glitch right?
a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.
They key facet in the definition is the attitude of others, not the individual himself. (In fact, anyone who considers themselves a hero usually falls well short of the mark).
Sully did what he trained to do - react decisively, but under control, in a bad situation. I work on aircraft systems, and the truest truism I know is that the system designers didn't think of everything.
That's why the pilots are there.
Sully is a hero because those passengers (and others) see him as one. Sully is a pilot because that's what he sees himself as.
Sounds about right to me!
Nearly capable?! Meaning incapable. At this stage of computer assisted flight, no AI exists to make a decision sequence such as "All engines out. No airport within gliding distance. No open highway available. I'll use the river as a runway".
That may be so...but not with me aboard!
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