Poor Republican

People are calling the fatality-free crash of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 a miracle.  To an extent, perhaps.  But it was also the work of an extremely good pilot.

If what happened today was a miracle, then Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, III was the miracle worker.

A one-time fighter pilot with over 19,000 hours in the air, “Sully” is heavily experienced.  More than that though, he has the reflexes and nerve of a cobra with a lobotomy.  Here’s what we’re talking about.

The Airbus A320 typically climbs out around 220-230 knots.  The stall speed of the aircraft is variable depending on a lot of factors, but it’s around half of that, roughly speaking.  In a climb out from takeoff, especially in areas with noise ordinances, the aircraft would be losing speed rapidly if it lost power from even one engine, much less both.  In order to maintain control, the pilot would have to get the nose down almost instantly.

He would then have to immediately set the aircraft into an optimum glide position.  This involves getting the nose to a certain angle and reconfiguring flaps, etc. to establish the best possible glide ratio, which is a measure of how far the plane will fly for every amount of altitude lost.  An Airbus A320’s glide ratio is stated by various sources to be around 17 or 18 to 1, meaning that for every 1000 feet lost, it will travel about 17 or 18 thousand feet forward.  You can see that they didn’t have a lot of flight time to play with.

While all this was going on, he would also have to be talking to controllers, his copilot and the crew.  He would be looking for a divert field, and failing that, the best place possible to land.  Once he decided where to land, he would have to set up for an approach as quickly as possible.  Checklists would be run through.

Passengers report that the pilot actually flew a circle or looping course to the river to give the crew and passengers time to prepare for the water landing.  This required expert energy management to keep the aircraft flying as long as possible while still making sure he could hit where he intended to set down.

Then there’s the landing itself.  Landing on water without fatalities is almost impossible in aircraft of that size.  You have to bring the aircraft down under perfect control, hand-flying an aircraft designed to be computer controlled…and without power.  You have to keep it perfectly level and just above stall speed and keep the nose up.  You have to fight the aircraft’s safety systems which don’t want you to do that.  Then you have to stall the aircraft onto the water, again against the aircraft’s better judgment.  And you have to maintain all that through the impact so the aircraft doesn’t dig in a wingtip or engine and cartwheel and/or break up.

Captain Sullenberger did all that.  He did it all perfectly, and in only about three minutes.  Had he done anything imperfectly at any time, the chances of the passengers and crew surviving at all would have been minimal.  Forget about no fatalities and think more like no survivors.  So he did it all perfectly and on time.  And when it was over, he calmly double-checked the aircraft to make sure he was the last one off before leaving the plane himself.  He even refused a life preserver until he was done.

There is no question that his copilot and crew were also invaluable assets, helping him manage the preparation of both the aircraft and passengers for the event.  The professionalism of the crew during the post-crash evacuation appears to have been absolute.

But the responsibility for the aircraft begins and ends with the command pilot.

Whatever recognition he gets, Captain Sullenberger earned it and then some.

Trackback URI |