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.
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.
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".
Thanks God Sully came of age during an era (the end of an era) in which the service acadamies,the military in general and their flight training programs in particular, and the airlines themselves actually selected and kept people who were the best people for the job at hand rather than some feel-good, dumbed-down PC affirmative action stupid fest, where weirdo Muslim terrorists are made Army officers picked just for “diversity Sully was selected and progressed throughout his career because he was good and performed that way. Of course what he did, all his talent, experience, hard work and study is now dismissed as “white privilege”
Nowadays, we could have maybe had some vibrant, incompetent token idiot cratering #1549 into the river—and this writer would be saying how unfair it was that the aircraft wasn’t better able to prevent this.....
Not to take anything away from Charles and Chuck for their contributions to aviation, but I don't recall ever hearing about either of them having to land a disabled plane fully loaded with human cargo over one of the most heavily populated cites in the world, much less having to take it down onto a very cold river with a very strong current. There are different kinds of hero's throughout history. The kind that have thousands of lives in their hands, like Sully did that day are the ones that are placed higher up on the pyramid of heroes than Charles or Chuck ever climbed.
This Times douche is really trying to tell me that a computer landed that large passenger jet safely on a choppy body of water?
Besides, if the plane was that great, it would not have been taken down by geese.
What in the world would prompt this a$$ wipe to write this? Is he concerned that Obama might not get “Man of the Year” so he feels compelled to take down “the challengers”?
Actually, Captain Sully and that Airbus are an excellent analogy of Obama and the United States. Except Obama has crashed his plane in a massive fireball while trying to land it on 8th Avenue. He then blamed the Republicans for putting the buildings too close together.