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Sully's landing

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Dan Roman

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 10, 2004
Posts
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This is pretty cool . Sorry if it has been posted elsewhere.
The bottom line is the guy did a great job, I'm impressed with the fact that during the grey area of the flight when he didn't know what he had or didn't have, he didn't panic and try and turn back to LGA (everyone would have died if he had), but he kept the Hudson as his best alternative while he sorted out the problem he was dealt with despite having no warning and very little time to deal with it.
Pretty impressive, and you envious insecure pinheads who need to point fingers or second guess his every move are probably the ones who would have panicked had you been dealt the same cards.

http://www.aircraftowner.com/videos/view/flight-1549-alternate-audio-multi-perspective-_542.html
 
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No doubt about it, Sully did a superb job! And he wasn't alone, both pilots up front kept a cool head and deserve a tremendous amount of credit. Given the experience level between the two, the outcome was probably a little more predictable after both engines quit.
 
I know you dudes love to hero worship, but all I got out of it was a white-haired captain instantly saying "I got it", when "getting it" didn't do anybody any good. In terms of "keeping options open", maybe. I didn't hear him doing checklists, nor did he hit the "ditch switch".

All in all, other than not turning back, I don't see where the hero part shows up.

The controller on the other hand...
 
I know you dudes love to hero worship, but all I got out of it was a white-haired captain instantly saying "I got it", when "getting it" didn't do anybody any good. In terms of "keeping options open", maybe. I didn't hear him doing checklists, nor did he hit the "ditch switch".

All in all, other than not turning back, I don't see where the hero part shows up.

The controller on the other hand...

It takes on average 4 seconds to even realize that you have a problem. then you realize that you have a double engine failure and the worlds busiest city below you. You try and pull out the checklists and hit the ditch switch when that is going on. You are probably one of those "book smart people" who would have tried to make it back to LGA because "thats what the book says" Honestly, no matter what he said, he put an airbus down in a river and no one died!
 
It takes on average 4 seconds to even realize that you have a problem. then you realize that you have a double engine failure and the worlds busiest city below you. You try and pull out the checklists and hit the ditch switch when that is going on. You are probably one of those "book smart people" who would have tried to make it back to LGA because "thats what the book says" Honestly, no matter what he said, he put an airbus down in a river and no one died!

Well said. What St Nic said is very true too. BOTH pilots did a great job.
 
It takes on average 4 seconds to even realize that you have a problem. then you realize that you have a double engine failure and the worlds busiest city below you. You try and pull out the checklists and hit the ditch switch when that is going on. You are probably one of those "book smart people" who would have tried to make it back to LGA because "thats what the book says" Honestly, no matter what he said, he put an airbus down in a river and no one died!

I'm not saying I would have done it better (although ten bucks says I would have called for a checklist...any checklist) but I am saying that what he did didn't come anywhere near the heroism of the hydraulic failure SUX captain (Al Haynes?) who really used all his resources.

Sully said, "I got it", "Standby", "No", and a couple of other phrases that didn't communicate jack to the controller who was trying to help him. He turned left, coasted until he hit without running a single checklist, mostly because he had done the stupid white-haired captain thing and grabbed the controls at the first sign of a problem. Since his FO was pretty sharp, do you think he did good, or bad by grabbing the controls AND TALKING ON THE RADIO at the same time? "Hero" sure. Try that in the sim and see how heroic your debrief is.

I wasn't all that sure about this whole thing until I watched the animation with the subtitles, then I scratched my head and wondered why nobody asked the hard questions. Maybe because there was no way out, so it didn't matter in the end if he used proper CRM and the aircraft manuals to get himself out of a tight spot.

But ask yourself this...what if there was a procedure in a checklist that he could have run that would have restarted an engine (ok, I know they didn't need to restart, they were just at idle), then does his "I got it" and radio talk look any different?

I've noticed that unlike the Al Haynes incident, nobody is going over the CRM of the tapes to applaud old "Shucks, I know I'm a hero, I always planned on this day" Sully.

Instead, the biggest praise you got for him is what you need to pass a private pilot checkride...don't turn 180 when you lose all power. So Sully is a hero for passing his private?

"I got it", gotta love it.

I suspect his co-pilot was busy reading the ECAM directions, not much to do other than "off/on" with the engine switches, but still, what if there was?
 
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Oh yeah, forgot some other heroics:

1. Forgot to declare an emergency
2. Forgot to tell the tower he was ditching (they had to figure it out)
3. Didn't speak to the flight attendants

Hard act to follow.
 
Oh yeah, forgot some other heroics:

1. Forgot to declare an emergency
2. Forgot to tell the tower he was ditching (they had to figure it out)
3. Didn't speak to the flight attendants

Hard act to follow.

1. Does Mayday Mayday Mayday not qualify?
2. "We're gonna be in the Hudson"
3. In hindsight, it didn't matter. Maybe he had the foresight to know that?
4. He called for the checklist for "loss of thrust in both engines".

Your arguments are like Michael Moore's.
 

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