Word: pilot
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...Hudson River on a frigid January afternoon, and a New York minute for his legend to flourish. In this slim volume, William Langewiesche lets some of the air out of Sully's soaring mystique. The Vanity Fair correspondent, a professional aviator himself, hails the captain as a "superb pilot" whose "extraordinary concentration" helped save the lives of 150 passengers and five crew members after his Airbus A320 struck a flock of Canada geese and lost thrust in both engines. In the aftermath of the averted tragedy, Sully became a national hero, feted by all but a few stray critics carping...
...hero in the cockpit. But journalist William Langewiesche takes a different view of the aborted Jan. 15 flight, which Sullenberger guided safely into the water after the Airbus 320 struck a flock of geese near LaGuardia Airport and lost all power. A Vanity Fair correspondent and former professional pilot, Langewiesche has written the most detailed account yet of the short flight, Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson. He spoke with TIME about the near disaster, the media's role in shaping perceptions of the incident and the forgotten star of the fateful flight...
...start, the popular shorthand for the safe landing of Flight 1549 has been "the miracle on the Hudson." But that's not the way you see it. Miracle? Absolutely not. It's a catchy, superficial media term. It's almost an insult to Sullenberger: God was not his co-pilot, [First Officer Jeffrey] Skiles was. These were two very competent pilots who did a great job of flying, and they were flying an extremely capable airplane. Sullenberger and Skiles did not in any sense think of this as a miracle. They thought of this as a job they did. (Read...
...other exceptional thing was Sullenberger's power of concentration during the descent. He was flying largely instinctively: a highly experienced pilot completely in tune with his airplane. It wasn't just what he did, it's what he chose not to do - when he chose not to talk on the radio, [for example]. He wasn't bothering with formalities...
There seems to be a lot of fear about flying out there these days. Recently the news media devoted a lot of coverage to the Northwest flight that overshot Minneapolis and the United pilot accused of being drunk in London. Is the danger being overstated? Of course it's being overstated. People are not as afraid of things as they're said to be by the superficialities of the media. People know what it's like to die; everyone is prepared for it. We're not such cowards as one might believe from all the hysteria on television...