Sully..Peanut Butter..Pay

[Kip Powick]

Interesting comments here, particularily when topics like meals and pay pop up on this forum..

((my Italics))

Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III is North America's most famous fly boy.

On Jan. 15, 2009, he safely landed Flight 1549 from New York to Charlotte, N.C., in the Hudson River when shortly after takeoff, a flock of Canada geese flew into the plane's engines, knocking them out of commission.

The 150 passengers and five crew sustained only minor injuries and event quickly became known as "The Miracle on the Hudson." Thanks to the immediate and global reach of the Internet,, the world got to see the nail-biting rescue live, and rejoice.

"This story has been noticed by so many people world wide," Sullenberger, 58, says in an interview. "I've gotten letters from everywhere in the world. People tell me they remember where they were when they heard about it. It is an event that has touched people deeply."

It was the last flight in a four-day shift that began with Sullenberger making a peanut butter sandwich for lunch – he'd be teased later by the delicious smells wafting into the cockpit from the first-class cabin. Meals are no longer available to the flight crew in this era of U.S. airline cost-cutting.

Sullenberger had packed his carry-on bag as usual – three shirts, three pairs of socks, three pairs of underwear, books, umbrella and a laptop. He had Green Day and The Killers on his iPod.

He'd kissed his wife, Lorrie, a women's fitness instructor, as he left their California home and kept in touch with his two adopted daughters by phone while he criss-crossed the country.

At the moment of truth, seconds before his emergency landing, Sullenberger admits he was so focused on the job at hand that his family didn't enter his mind.

"I could feel my body's reaction intensely," Sullenberger says. "It was the most intense stress reaction I've ever felt. But I compartmentalized it, I pushed it away."

In his new book Highest Duty, published by HarperCollins, Sullenberger opens the cockpit door to reveal what was going on during those fateful few minutes.

He had several strikes against him: The engines were dead; the plane was losing altitude and he didn't have enough time to get to an airport; New York's highways had too many power lines and overpasses for him to try to land there; and he knew water landings can rip apart planes upon impact.

But he had lots of pluses, too: A diligent air traffic controller; plenty of emergency and medical staff standing by; and an experienced crew.

"(First Officer) Jeffrey Skiles, who I credit for skill and courage, had been flying for 24 years. He had over 20,000 hours of flying experience and we had over 70 hours of experience together. That's a wealth of experience to draw upon," Sullenberger says.

"The flight attendants (all who had been flying for more than 26 years) had a calm, professional demeanour. It made all the difference in the world why the rescue went so well. The passengers were, for the most part, seasoned business travellers who knew how to behave."

But the biggest plus of all was Sullenberger's cool head, earned through more than 42 years of flying.

Taught to fly by a crop duster in Texas at the age of 16, Sullenberger took his schoolteacher mother up on his first flight as a licensed pilot.

He was a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force before becoming a commercial pilot. His book, written with author Jeffrey Zaslow, details these events and many more that helped Sullenberger succeed that day.

"People may not appreciate how important the personal side is – every person I've come in contact with in my life has contributed to my success."

The book is also a criticism of the poor treatment of air crews in a cost-conscious industry, especially over the past eight years.

The downturn in the industry post-9/11 meant Sullenberger's pay has been rolled back and his pension greatly reduced. As a result, Sullenberger has a consulting business on the side, like most pilots who've had to get a second job to make ends meet. (According to www.airlinepilotcentral.com, pilots are paid on an hourly basis, or flight time, and the highest seniority rate – 16 years or more – ranges from $95 to $160 an hour, but with people afraid to fly post-Sept. 11 those hours were severely cut back on most airlines.)

Just before the shift that ended in the Hudson River, Sullenberger and his wife had agonized over finances. They considered selling their home after an investment property purchase went sour when the tenant left and another couldn't be found.

"People have to be able to do it for a career," he says of his profession. "This isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. We need to keep people in it. It's not something just anybody can do. We have to make it a livable wage with a quality of life."

Sullenberger admits his life has changed dramatically since that fateful day in January. While he still flies planes for US Airways, he spends most of his time now talking about air safety.

"It's essentially a new job for me, a public spokesperson for aviation safety."

[Don Hudson]

Thanks for the post Kip.

"People have to be able to do it for a career," he says of his profession. "This isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. We need to keep people in it. It's not something just anybody can do. We have to make it a livable wage with a quality of life."

One of the main factors in the decline of the airline pilot profession is, the industry is oblivious to why it is so safe.

For the first time since the fatal accident rate began dramatically reducing to the level we see today, newbie managers coming into the industry who have no idea how this industry got so safe, are trying to make a profit the way Walmart does - by paying nothing, treating employees as liabilities and cost-items and ignoring input from those who know better through experience.

The precursors to a rise in the accident rate are in the data now. They are not CFIT, mid-air or mechanically-related accidents anymore, they are loss-of-control accidents. The character of recent accidents, (last ten years), highlights such factors as training, standards, (including the value of SOPs), experience levels and candidate selection processes (including the availability of suitable candidates to begin with).

The Colgan accident is a bell-weather accident but nowhere near the first of its kind. We could examine any one of the following to see these factors in play:

Spanair at Madrid

Turkish at Amsterdam

Pinnacle in the US

Gulfair at Bahrain

Comair at Lexington

Helios out of Athens

Air France out of Rio

There are others.

Deregulation has played a significant part in the degradation of the industry but it is not the only factor. Aviation can be done cheaper but "smarter" is a necessary partner but often it isn't. The deregulation of flight safety in Canada remains a significant concern not because SMS is the wrong system but because you can't leave to its own devices a private organization designed solely for profit-making. At some point the regulator must oversee the development of safety awareness under SMS and gradually move to such independence.

We saw the results of the lack of oversight in the meat industry. Imagine for a moment that all regulatory "interference" and regulator oversight was removed from the manufacturer of the H1N1 vaccine?...