As I’ve pointed out previously, I get twitchy when people abuse the label “hero.” Too many schmoes who were doing nothing actually heroic get labelled as such (see: “Sports hero”). But sometmes, somebody does something truly badass, and actually deserves some praise. Take, for example, Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, III, the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549, which crashed into the Hudson river today. In case you’ve been living in a cave for the past 24 hours, this Airbus apparently ran into a flock of birds, which trashed the engines. In most such cases, you’d expect the plane to make a major hole in the ground, or, in this case, to go cartwheeling across the surface of the river. But instead, Captain Sullenberger managed to make his plane do this:
Bringing in a dead airplane for a water landing with the result that the plane is so intact and stable that the passengers can actually stand on the wings while they await rescue? That’s friggen’ AWSOME.
Read more about him at The Smoking Gun. Feel free to then pimp slap the next smug celebrity you see.
4 Responses to “Here’s another fella worthy of the “hero” label”
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I’m pretty sure I’ve heard there’s been a total of 1 successful water landing of a commercial airliner prior to this. Every other attempt leading to the destruction of the plane and the death of everyone or nearly everyone.
Given that history, it’s very amazing.
This guy deserves some kind of medal!
If you haven’t seen the security camera vid’s for this look them up! It looks like he’s performing a standard landing till you see the water shoot up, and the angle is SO perfect he just skids across the surface to a smooth stop.
Randy
Forgot to mention: It was noted that the first water taxi arrived within 10 minutes, which is VERY quickly. Turns out most of the W/T operators saw the plane coming in low over the river and basically spun around and chased after it. None of them were sure what they would find, but not ONE expected the passengers to already be evacuated and most already in the life-boat/safety slides.
The press mentioned that only two “people” had to be pulled from the plane by divers, from what I’ve been seeing from passengers and crew comments I’ll make a bet that one of them was Capt. Sullenburger himself as he PERSONALLY walked the plane twice to make sure everyone was off and I can easily see him checking “just-one-more-time” as the plane was going under…..
I don’t recall there being an FAA reg that states the Captain must go down with the aircraft…. (OK, “in-flight” it’s not like there is a choice, but in the water? :o)
Randy