Well written and well thought of article.

Capt Haynes came to talk to all us military types at ETAR last summer for the quarterly flight safety meeeting. He gave a play by play of what happened to their DC-10 that day. He also never ventured too far forward without mention of his entire crew. I felt priviledged to hear the man speak; something to learn from for all of us who have something to do with operating large aircraft, whether it be civilian or military.

You can wonder all you want but you will likely NEVER hear of another Sully and Haynes until the next "incident" or "accident" with a positive or life-saving outcome.

At which point another "hero(s)" will emerge. After the emergence of this new "hero" you can then add his or her name to your above post and the cycle continues...

Most "hero" types sit quietly in the wings hoping never to get called upon.

Seriously? I'm sorry my sarcasm passed you over without being fully understood. There is a good chance that most professional airline pilots could have pulled off the actual landing in the same conditions. What you don't get is that the physical act of flying the plane is such a small part of the whole story. The professionalism that has been displayed after the fact is what is missing from this society. Everything these days is about passing the blame to somebody else or exploiting anything good for personal gain.

For as much as we have seen of Sully on TV, there is no doubt that if he was in this for personal gain he would be on ten times more magazines and TV shows. And likewise if things wouldn't have gone quite so well, he seems like the kind of guy that would still be out there taking responsibility for his actions. I think it's called integrity, and unfortunately it is in short supply in every profession.

Agree 100%.

Also, not sure if it played any role in his (Sully's) sub-conscious reasoning but nevertheless as a glider pilot (which I believe applies to Sully too) being able to look out at your approximate landing zone from your side window helps tremendously when judging the landing itself. Since they were in a left turn and Sully was in the left seat that might have helped him in his decision too.

Overall, he scored a perfect glider landing! :D

I'm thinking that must have been a SWA 737 and they were simply still slowing down to their "max gear extension" speed... :D

Sorry SWA folks, I'm just keedin' here... ;)

Can’t forget the crew of the Ryanair flight that ingested a flock of starlings and sustained a double engine failure in landing configuration about 2 to 3 miles from landing in Nov. 10th, 2008. The 737-800 was a write off, but everyone walked away from the plane.

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/3...-ciampino.html


Same for the Air Transat Airbus 330 that glided to a landing a couple of years ago.

I see what you're saying as far as the CA having much more experience in the airplane, as well as the "I signed for it so I'll wreck it" way of thinking.

Kind of an apples to oranges comparison. But a coworker once had a prop come off shortly after takeoff, with an FO that was right off of IOE.

We asked him how that worked out, and if he felt like his hands were more than full with the emergency as well as an FO that didn't have much time in the airplane, let alone the airline/multicrew environment. He said it was actually easier, the guy was right out of training and super sharp on his procedures.

Or a perfect "watering" :D

AV8OR -

I've heard many people mention CA Sullenberger's glider experience but I wonder how much it really might have helped. I don't have any glider experience myself but it would seem that without some knowledge of any aircraft's gliding performance that there wouldn't be a sight picture developed. Matter of fact - I could see a glider pilot trying to apply his glider sight picture to an aircraft not capable of such performance and making a serious error in judgment. It has been a long time since I flew GA and my current aircraft doesn't have a best glide airspeed :o but at least smaller GA aircraft havea best glide airspeed and even have a published glide ratio correct? Do CRJ/ERJ, Q400, and larger airliners have such figures available?

USMCFLYR

The 747-200 (classic) has a glide speed chart. Enter the aircraft weight and read the speed at the bottom of the chart.

Yep, they do have the values published, just not labeled "best glide speed". It's found in the take off data speeds.

I don't know anything about 2 engine fighter jet performance so excuse the ignorance. But if you were to lose an engine right after liftoff, is there a speed at which you climb for best angle to ensure obstacle clearance, etc? If so, do you climb to that altitude, then level out to accelerate and then climb at a best rate?

Or do you just just keep climbing at specific speed all the way up?