On occasion, it is both.
Chesley Burnett "Sully" Sullenberger III (born
January 23, 1951) is an American retired aviator, diplomat
and aviation safety expert. He is best known for his actions as captain of US Airways Flight
1549 on January 15, 2009, when he ditched the
plane, landing on the Hudson River after
both engines were disabled by a bird strike. All
155 people aboard survived. After the Hudson landing, Sullenberger became an
outspoken advocate for aviation safety and
helped develop new protocols for flight safety. He served as the co-chairman,
along with his co-pilot on
Flight 1549, Jeffrey
Skiles, of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA)'s Young Eagles youth
introduction-to-aviation program from 2009 to 2013.
Sullenberger retired from US Airways in
2010, after 30 years as a commercial pilot. In 2011, he was hired by CBS News as an aviation and safety
expert.
Sullenberger is the co-author, with Jeffrey Zaslow,
of the New York Times bestseller Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters,
a memoir of his life and of the events surrounding Flight 1549. His second
book, Making a Difference: Stories of Vision and Courage from America's
Leaders, was published in 2012. He was ranked second in Time's Top 100 Most Influential Heroes and Icons of 2009,
after Michelle
Obama.
In 2021, President Joe Biden announced
he would nominate Sullenberger as U.S. representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
with the rank of ambassador. He was confirmed by unanimous consent in
the Senate and
served in that role from February 3 to July 1, 2022.
Because of his actions on January 15, 2009, he could
legitimately be called SUPERMAN
On January 15, 2009, Sullenberger was the captain of US Airways Flight
1549, an Airbus A320 taking
off from LaGuardia
Airport in New York Cit] Shortly
after takeoff, the plane struck a flock
of Canada geese and
lost power in both engines. Quickly determining he would be unable to
reach either LaGuardia or Teterboro Airports, Sullenberger
flew the plane to an emergency water landing on the Hudson River. All
155 people on board survived and were rescued.
Sullenberger said later: "It was very quiet as we worked, my copilot
Jeff Skiles and I. We were a team. But to have zero thrust coming out of those
engines was shocking - the silence." Sullenberger was the last to
leave the aircraft, after twice making sweeps through the cabin to make sure
all passengers and crew had evacuated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sully_Sullenberger
Sullenberger, described by friends as "shy and
reticent", was noted for his poise and calm during the crisis; New
York City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg dubbed him "Captain Cool"[Nonetheless,
Sullenberger suffered symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in
subsequent weeks, including sleeplessness and flashbacks. He said that the
moments before the landing were "the worst sickening, pit-of-your-stomach,
falling-through-the-floor feeling" that he had ever experienced. He
also said, "One way of looking at this might be that for 42 years, I've
been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience, education and
training. And on January 15, the balance was sufficient so that I could make a
very large withdrawal."
The National Transportation Safety Board ruled that landing on the river
was the correct decision instead of attempting a return to LaGuardia
Airport because the normal procedures for engine loss are designed for
cruising altitudes, not immediately after takeoff. Simulations performed at
the Airbus
Training Centre Europe in Toulouse showed that Flight 1549 could
have made it back to LaGuardia had that maneuver begun immediately after the
bird strike. However, such scenarios both neglected the time necessary
for the pilots to understand and assess the situation, and risked the
possibility of a crash within a densely populated area.
On February 24, 2009, Sullenberger testified before the U.S. House of
Representatives Subcommittee on Aviation of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure that his
salary had been cut by 40 percent, and that his pension, like
most airline pensions, was terminated and replaced by a PBGC guarantee worth only pennies on the
dollar. He cautioned that airlines were "under pressure to hire people
with less experience. Their salaries are so low that people with greater
experience will not take those jobs. We have some carriers that have hired some
pilots with only a few hundred hours of experience. ... There's simply no
substitute for experience in terms of aviation safety."
The Sullenberger
Aviation Museum in Charlotte, North
Carolina is named for him. It houses a Miracle on the Hudson
exhibit.
Tom Hanks portrayed Sullenberger in the 2016 movie,
"Sully".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_commercial_aircraft
In the last 25 years, domestic passenger deaths have
been astonishingly low.
Prior to this week's collision between American Eagle
Flight 5342 and a military helicopter, there have only been 6 days when
domestic passengers were killed.
Here they are:
1/31/2000 - Alaska Airlines 261
crashed into the Pacific Ocean, killing 83 passengers and 5 crew
members
2/16/2000 - Emery Worldwide Airlines Flight 17
crashed near Sacramento, killing three crew members
9/11/2001 - 4 airliners were hijacked by terrorists. In
addition to the airline passengers, hundreds of people on the ground were also
killed. Total death toll was over 3,000 people.
1/8/2003 - Air Midwest 5481 crashed in Charlotte,
killing all 19 passengers and 2 pilots
7/31/2008 - East Coast Jets Flight 81 crashed in
Minnesota. All 8 on board were killed.
4/17/2018 - Southwest Airlines Flight 1380
experienced engine failure but did not crash. One person was killed
1/29/2025 - American Eagle Flight 5342 collided with a
military helicopter over the Potomac. A total of 67 people lost
their lives.
DEI had absolutely nothing to do with this week’s crash.
It was caused by the helicopter straying from its
flight path, as well as the fact that there not enough air traffic controllers
at Reagan International Airport
Due to the persistent shortage of air traffic
controllers at our nation's airports, the FAA began to hire people with
disabilities, and Donald Trump did nothing to stop the process.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/30/faa-dei-trump-fact-checker/
For air traffic controllers, the Obama administration
in 2013 instituted a new hiring system that introduced a biographical
questionnaire to attract minorities, underrepresented in the controller corps.
The program was criticized by various outlets, including on FOX “News”, making
it harder for more skilled applicants to get hired as controllers.
Donald Trump, in his first term, left the policy in
place, leading to a class-action lawsuit filed
in 2019 by Mountain States Legal Foundation. The case was due to go to trial this
year.
Moreover, the FAA under Trump in 2019 launched a
program to hire controllers using the very criteria he decried at his news
conference.
The FAA announced in September 2024 that
it had more than 14,000 air traffic controllers.
The organization said at the time it was working to
"reverse a decades-long air traffic controller staffing level
decline."
In 2024, the FAA exceeded its goal of
hiring 1,800 air traffic controllers with a final total of 1,811, saying it was
the largest number of hires in nearly a decade. That figure, however, does not
account for air traffic controllers who retired or new hires who do not go on
to reach graduation, which impacts the net gain.
Is there a shortage of air traffic controllers?
The New York Times reported in
2023 that nearly all air traffic control sites in the country were
understaffed. The shortage, per
the report, forced many controllers to work 10-hour days, six days a week,
resulting in an exhausted work force susceptible to making dangerous mistakes.
The air traffic control tower at Reagan National
Airport, as of September 2023, had 19 fully certified controllers when the
targets set by the FAA and controllers' union called for 30, per the Times.
Before the FAA's 2024 hiring totals were announced, its
latest workforce plan had said the agency was short 3,000 controllers to fill
air traffic control stations and towers across the country as of May, according to Airlines for
America.
That understaffing leads to controllers regularly
working overtime.
An agreement between the
FAA and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association in July gave
controllers 10 hours off between shifts and 12 hours off before and after a
midnight shift. They also agreed to limit consecutive overtime assignments.
"The science is clear that controller fatigue is a
public safety issue, and it must be addressed," FAA Administrator Mike
Whitaker said at the time.
Did Donald Trump freeze the hiring of air traffic controllers?
Donald Trump signed an executive order on January 20 to
freeze the hiring of federal civilian
employees. Trump's order does not apply to military personnel of the
armed forces or to positions related to immigration enforcement, national
security, or public safety.
The order did not state if that applies to air traffic
controllers, whose roles could fall under public safety.
A Department of Transportation spokesperson told NBC4
that air traffic controllers were exempt from any hiring freeze issued.
"The FAA has been hiring and onboarding air
traffic controllers and other safety-critical positions," the statement
said.
“FAA
Provides Aviation Careers to People with Disabilities,” the agency announced on April 11, 2019. The pilot program, the
announcement said, would “identify specific opportunities for people with
targeted disabilities, empower them and facilitate their entry into a more
diverse and inclusive workforce.”
The
primary cause of the crash was the fact that the helicopter was flying 100 feet
higher than it should have been.
If we’re recklessly assigning blame, we might
just as easily point out that, before Trump took office, there hadn’t been a
major commercial plane crash in the United States in the previous 16 years;
that, in the week before the crash, Trump sacked the head of the Transportation Security
Administration, disbanded the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, failed to
name an acting head of the FAA, and imposed a hiring freeze that apparently
includes air traffic controllers; and that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) last year celebrated his “landmark
victory” in expanding the number of flights out of
National — over the protest of aviation safety experts and senators from
Maryland and Virginia, who warned that Cruz and friends “decided to ignore the flashing red warning
light of the recent near-collision of two aircraft at [National] and jam even
more flights onto the busiest runway in America.”
Opinion| Trump hijacks a tragic plane crash to further his political vendettas - TheWashington Post
Remember
the phrase, "the buck stops here"?
Since Pete
Hegseth is now in charge of the Pentagon, he is actually the guy to blame.
However, since he only got confirmed last week, it is not fair to blame him for
the disaster.
The
more important fact is that he is totally unqualified for the position he
now holds, and there WILL be other disasters in the future - and that is a
lead pipe cinch.
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