When Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger brought the aft belly skin of his US Airways Airbus A320 into contact with the cold water of New York’s Hudson River on January 15 and pulled off a magnificent
emergency ditching after Canada geese had choked the life out of both engines, he restored to the piloting profession an aura of cool skill and professionalism that had been sullied by decades of accidents blamed on pilot error. Indeed, within months of Sully’s splashdown, an accident (the
Colgan Q400 disaster near Buffalo in February) and an incident (the
Northwest “laptop affair” Minneapolis overshoot) swiftly tarnished the fresh luster.
But God bless Sully for showing a world wearied by bad news what good old-fashioned piloting can achieve in an era when the profession of airline pilot has been distilled to a job centered more on monitoring automation than on stick-and-rudder finesse. Like the pilot who deadsticked an Air Canada 767 onto the disused runway of a former RCAF base in Gimli, Manitoba, in July 1983 after a fueling dipstick error at the departure airport silenced both engines en route, Sully counted gliding among his flying experience.
