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justforbooks · 3 years

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On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549, an Airbus A320 on a flight from New York City's LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte, North Carolina, struck a flock of birds shortly after take-off, losing all engine power. Unable to reach any airport for an emergency landing, pilots Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles glided the plane to a ditching in the Hudson River off Midtown Manhattan. All 155 people on board were rescued by nearby boats, with a few serious injuries.

This water landing of a powerless jetliner became known as the "Miracle on the Hudson", and a National Transportation Safety Board official described it as "the most successful ditching in aviation history". The Board rejected the notion that the pilot could have avoided ditching by returning to LaGuardia or diverting to nearby Teterboro Airport.

The pilots and flight attendants were awarded the Master's Medal of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators in recognition of their "heroic and unique aviation achievement".

An NTSB board member called the ditching "the most successful ... in aviation history. These people knew what they were supposed to do and they did it and as a result, no lives were lost." New York State Governor David Paterson called the incident "a Miracle on the Hudson." U.S. President George W. Bush said he was "inspired by the skill and heroism of the flight crew," and praised the emergency responders and volunteers. President-elect Barack Obama said that everyone was proud of Sullenberger's "heroic and graceful job in landing the damaged aircraft." He thanked the crew, whom he invited to his inauguration five days later.

The Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators awarded the crew the rarely bestowed Master's Medal on January 22, 2009 for outstanding aviation achievement, at the discretion of the Master of the Guild. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg presented the crew with the Keys to the City, and Sullenberger with a replacement copy of a library book lost on the flight, Sidney Dekker's Just Culture: Balancing Safety and Accountability. Rescuers received Certificates of Honor.

The crew received a standing ovation at the Super Bowl XLIII on February 1, 2009, and Sullenberger threw the ceremonial first pitch of the 2009 Major League Baseball season for the San Francisco Giants. His Giants jersey was inscribed with the name "Sully" and the number 155 – the count of people aboard the plane.

On July 28, passengers Dave Sanderson and Barry Leonard organized a thank you luncheon for emergency responders from Hudson County, New Jersey, on the shores of Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen, New Jersey, where 57 passengers had been brought following their rescue. Present were members of the U.S. Coast Guard, North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue, NY Waterway Ferries, the American Red Cross, Weehawken Volunteer First Aid, the Weehawken Police Department, West New York E.M.S., North Bergen E.M.S., the Hudson County Office of Emergency Management, the New Jersey E.M.S. Task Force, the Guttenberg Police Department, McCabe Ambulance, the Harrison Police Department, and doctors and nurses who treated survivors.

Sullenberger was named Grand Marshal for the 2010 Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California.

In August 2010, aeronautical chart publisher Jeppesen issued a humorous approach plate titled "Hudson Miracle APCH," dedicated to the five crew of Flight 1549 and annotated "Presented with Pride and Gratitude from your friends at Jeppesen."

Sullenberger retired on March 3, 2010, after thirty years with US Airways and its predecessor, Pacific Southwest Airlines. At the end of his final flight he was reunited with Skiles and a number of the passengers from Flight 1549.

In December 2010, Sullenberger was appointed an Officer of France's Legion of Honour.

N106US, the accident aircraft, was moved to a salvage yard in New Jersey and put up for auction a week after the accident, but remained without takers for over two years. In 2011, it was purchased by the Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, and reassembled, minus the engines, in the museum's main hangar, where it is currently on display.

In 2013, the entire crew was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.

The ditching was recorded by several closed-circuit television cameras. Television reports and documentaries produced soon afterward contained extensive video of the ditching and rescue, and recorded interviews with the aircrew, passengers, rescuers, and other key participants.

Sullenberger's 2009 memoir, Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters was adapted into a feature film Sully, directed by Clint Eastwood. It starred Tom Hanks as Sullenberger and Aaron Eckhart as co-pilot Jeff Skiles. It was released by Warner Bros. on September 9, 2016.

In May 2011, CBS News hired Sullenberger as an aviation and safety expert.

His second book, Making a Difference: Stories of Vision and Courage from America's Leaders, was published in May 2012. He was ranked second in Time's Top 100 Most Influential Heroes and Icons of 2009, after Michelle Obama.

In December 2018, he received the Tony Jannus Award for distinguished achievement in commercial air transportation.

Sullenberger's speech before Congress concerning U.S. civil aviation is featured in Michael Moore's 2009 documentary Capitalism: A Love Story.

Sullenberger is also referred to in the 2011 romantic comedy film Friends with Benefits. Throughout the film, Justin Timberlake's character repeatedly suggests to people he meets aboard planes that modern airplanes practically fly themselves, and that Sullenberger's feat was less impressive than it was portrayed, an idea for which he encounters incredulity and hostility. Mila Kunis' character is also seen reading Sullenberger's English Wikipedia article.

The 2010 song "A Real Hero", by French electronica artist College and the band Electric Youth, is about Captain Sullenberger and the Flight 1549 water landing. Frontman Austin Garrick was inspired to write the song by his grandfather, whose reference to Sullenberger as "a real human being and a real hero" became the song's refrain.

Radio personality Garrison Keillor wrote "Pilot Song: The Ballad of Chesley Sullenberger III" for the January 17, 2009 edition of his radio variety show A Prairie Home Companion.

Sullenberger appeared as himself in a cameo role in the 2017 film Daddy's Home 2.

"Hudson River Runway", the March 14, 2011, episode of the TV series Mayday, documents the events around Flight 1549's emergency landing, and contains interviews with several of its real-life participants. Captain Sullenberger is not interviewed in the show, but is portrayed in reenactments by actor Christopher Britton.

President George H. W. Bush's service dog Sully, who was assigned to Bush in mid-2018 after the death of Bush's wife Barbara, was named after Sullenberger.

Sully is featured in the pilot of the 2020 Fox cartoon series Duncanville.

Sullenberger was widely celebrated for landing the plane with no loss of life.

Jeffrey Bruce "Jeff" Skiles was flying as a First Officer on flight 1549 due to a staff reduction at US Airways; he had usually flown as Captain prior to the staff reduction and actually had slightly more flight hours than Sullenberger (though he had much less experience in the Airbus A320).

Both Skiles' parents were pilots during his childhood, and he became a pilot himself when he was just sixteen years old. He first worked flying cargo airplanes, and then worked for Midstate Airlines from 1983 to 1986, but at the time of the emergency landing he had been with US Airways for 23 years.

Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto, asserted that the successful emergency landing relied on the cooperation of Sullenberger and Skiles. Gawande's central premise is that even really experienced people in any field encounter rare events, and that successfully coping with the rare event requires first the careful anticipation of future emergencies, and second, preparing a well thought-out list of steps to follow, in advance.

In his book Gawande reminded readers that, during an emergency, there are so many tasks to complete, that the co-pilot is working at least as hard as the pilot. Sullenberger had taken on the task of finding a safe place to land, and actually landing, leaving his experienced copilot Skiles the task of following the checklist to try to restart the jet engines. He noted that Skiles was able to complete the checklist in the less than three minute period between the bird strike and the landing, noting this was "something investigators later testified to be "very remarkable" in the time frame he had—and something they found difficult to replicate in simulation."

Skiles went on to become the Vice President of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations (CAPA) that represents the interests of 28,000 airline pilots in safety and security issues. In this role he was instrumental in the creation of the First Officer Qualification rule which significantly increased the requirements for training and experience of First Officers on the flight deck of US registered airliners. Skiles joined with the Families of Continental Flight 3407 and the National Air Disaster Alliance to mold the creation of and ensure passage of the Airline Safety Act of 2010. This sweeping legislation significantly improved safety in the US airline industry and as of 2020 there has not been even one fatality due to a US airline accident in over 10 years.

Skiles is a writer and since 2011 has published over 100 articles on safety and general interest aviation topics in nationally distributed magazines such as Sport Aviation, FLYING, Air & Space, PilotMAG, Midwest Flyer, Vintage Airplane, and the Physicians Executive Journal.

Jeffrey Bruce "Jeff" Skiles, as of 2020, is piloting Boeing 787 Dreamliners for American Airlines.

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