Captain Cool: Ex air force pilot an expert
on aviation safety.
Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III, kept a low profile yesterday, but that didn't stop
him being called the "hero of Hudson" for his calm, deft response in the face of calamity, after he safely landed his passenger
plane in the river off New York on Thursday.
Sullenberger, a 57-year-old former fighter pilot
from Danville, California, is a veteran of US Airways with 40 years' aviation experience and about 20,000 flight hours in
jets, propeller planes and gliders.
He flew F-4 jets in the US air force before his
civilian career, and now gives speeches on aviation safety. His interests include studying the psychology of how teams cope
in an emergency, media reports said yesterday.
Tributes have been pouring in to the pilot via his
newly-created Facebook page, which last night listed more than 35,000 fans of the captain.
New York's governor, David Paterson, said an anonymous
person had offered to donate $10,000 (£6,780) toward building a statue to the pilot.
John and Jane Garcia, his neighbours, were not surprised
by Sullenberger's nonchalance. "If you met Sully, you'd understand," said John. "You'd say, 'Yep, that's Sully'." Jane
agreed: "It's not surprising. He's a great guy."
One of the first rescuers on the scene in the Hudson
river said Sullenberger had seemed impervious to the chaos around him. "He looked absolutely immaculate. He looked like David
Niven in an airplane uniform. He looked unruffled … You could see him walking down the aisles making sure everybody
got out."
Sullenberger is the chief executive officer of an
aviation safety firm, Safety Reliability Methods. His online CV says he served with the US air force in Europe, the Pacific
and at Nellis air force base in Nevada. While there, he was a mission commander in aerial war games known as red flag exercises.
According to air controllers, there was an "eerie
calm" about the cockpit communications as options dwindled after the engines failed. Return to LaGuardia airport, from which
he'd just taken off? Too far. Land at the small Teterboro airport across the river in New Jersey? The plane wouldn't make
that either. A river landing was the only option, an official of the controllers' union told Reuters.
"That was pretty much it," said Doug Church, a spokesman
for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. "It was very clear to our controllers that he was going to make an attempt
at the Hudson."
Last night FOXnews.com reported that Sullenberger's
IQ scores had been "accidentally" leaked by his former school in Denison, Texas, revealing that he would have qualified for
Mensa membership when he was
12 years old.
Sullenberger is a graduate of the USAF academy,
Purdue University and the University of Northern Colorado. He was a speaker on two panels at the High Reliability Organisations
international conference in Deauville, France, in 2007 and has just been named a visiting scholar at the University of California,
Berkeley.
He served as an instructor and safety chairman of
the US Airline Pilots Association, and as accident investigator and national technical committee member, the local US media
reported. He has participated in several USAF and National Transportation Safety Board accident investigations.
His safety work led to the development of a Federal
Aviation Administration advisory circular.
