This article first appeared on Fire Aviation.
Sully, the movie about the Miracle on the Hudson that opened today has so far received pretty good reviews. As you may know, it is about the aircraft that struck a flock of geese at 3,200 feet about 100 seconds after taking off from La Guardia airport near New York City.
Chesley B. Sullenberger III was the pilot in command. After both engines went silent he said to his First Officer whose turn it was to take off on that flight, “My aircraft”.
Captain Sullenberger, now often called “Sully”, was selected for a cadet glider program while attending the Air Force Academy. By the end of that year he was an instructor pilot. When he graduated in 1973 he received the Outstanding Cadet in Airmanship award, as the class “top flyer”. He went on to fly F-4 Phantoms in the Air Force and served as a member of an aircraft accident investigation board in the Air Force. After he became a commercial pilot for US Airways he occasionally assisted the NTSB on accident investigations and taught courses on Crew Resource Management.
When the geese hit the engines January 15, 2009, Sully felt the impact, but more disturbing was the the sensation after the engines quit of slightly moving forward in his harness as the aircraft suddenly went from accelerating to slowing — at low altitude over New York City when they were supposed to be climbing.
US Airways did not have a checklist for the loss of both engines in an Airbus A320 at low altitude. The First Officer, Jeffery Skiles, went through the checklist for restarting the engines, but of course had no success. Sully evaluated their options — returning to La Guardia, diverting to Teterboro airport, or the third choice, a water landing in the Hudson River. Based on his experience, and drawing on his background as a glider pilot, he determined that it was impossible to make it to either airport. He lowered the nose and headed toward the river.
Passing 900 feet above the George Washington Bridge he pointed the aircraft so it would come to rest near a boat he spotted, thinking that it could help pull the passengers out of the very cold water on that winter day. Working with his First Officer, they made the only non-fatal water landing of a large commercial aircraft in recent history.
As the 150 passengers and four other crew members climbed out onto the wings and waited for rescue by ferry boats, Sully walked through the passenger compartment as it took on water to make sure everyone was off, then grabbed the maintenance log book and was the last one to exit the aircraft.
In a recent interview Katie Couric conducted with Sully director Clint Eastwood and actors Tom Hanks and Aaron Eckhart, she recalled something Sully, who at the time had 19,663 flight hours, told her not long after the successful water landing:
For 42 years I’ve been making small regular deposits in this bank of experience, education, and training. On January 15 the balance was sufficient so I could make a very large withdrawal.
In the last few decades wildland firefighters have used another name for the “bank of experience”, their “slide file” — memories of the situations they have been in over the course of their careers, good experiences and bad ones, all of which left data from which they can extrapolate solutions to new situations.
There is of course no substitute for an account balance in a bank of experience or a slide file. You can acquire incremental bits of it from books and training. But you can’t write a check and easily transfer it to someone else, not entirely, anyway. It has to be earned and learned, organically.
And here’s hoping you don’t have to “make a very large withdrawal”, on the ground or in the air.
Sully’s case has been studied in a simulator. Turns out, he coulda made it back to La Guardia.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703612804575222482042335978
We all recognize that Sully is a hero. He “did the right thing.”
Did he?
What if he’d killed everyone on board? Would we still say he made the right decisions? NTSB says that going into the river was the right decision…but…if he killed everyone on board, would we still think his decision-making process was sound? Would we look at his “distraction” in the cockpit with a keener eye? (Sully was on the cell phone while the aircraft taxied. It’s recorded)
The reason we should talk about this stuff is simple: the OUTCOME of an event (saving lives vs losing lives) always clouds an analysis of the decisions that led up to the outcome. This is called “outcome bias.” It colors the way we look at decisions. Generally, a bad outcome is believed to be preceded by bad decisions. This isn’t always the case.
In Sully’s case, he saved everyone. Heck, he had to have made the right decisions, right? Well…maybe his decision to go into the river was the WRONG call that resulted in a great outcome. Confusing this great (some would say, and have said “miraculous”) outcome with great or “correct” decisions is problematic.
If we’re going to talk about decisions in wildland fire, we’ll always be affected by the ultimate outcome. When someone dies or is injured, it’s so appealing to assume that a bad decision preceded the event. Likewise, when we save structures or pull off an incredible medevac, we make a similar assumption: all the decisions in “positive” outcomes have to be the “correct” decisions.
Separating decisions from outcomes is extremely challenging.
I’m not sure it’s actually possible. Is it?
“Johny”-
One thing in the WSJ article (which may be behind a paywall) that you did not mention is that in the simulations…
If “Johny’s” link does not work, try this link to Google search results, which should have the WSJ article at the top of the list.
One of the articles in the Google search summarized the “land at LaGuardia” option well:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ntsb-sully-could-have-made-it-back-to-laguardia/
“US Airways Flight 1549 could have made it back to New York’s LaGuardia Airport after colliding with geese last year, but under the circumstances the captain’s decision to ditch into the Hudson River was the better choice, documents released Tuesday by a federal safety panel said.
…
But that scenario would have required Sullenberger to make an immediate decision with little or no time to assess the situation. He also would have had no way of knowing that he would be successful, and therefore would have been risking the possibility of a catastrophic crash in a densely populated area.”
It would be interesting to have 100 pilots run through the same scenario in the flight simulator and see how many of them stall the airplane or hit the George Washington Bridge.
A hero is a man who does what he can. Romain Rolland
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha
Radio Traffic Between Sullenberger and LGA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPah2zWtk1U
Reenactment using google maps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GChobnO5YU4
FDNY Radio Traffic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvSlDwxexuc
FDNY Radio Traffic