illogic of the hudson river gasbags
predictably, the H-word spewers at LRC were trampling one another in the race to strawnk the word on chesley sullenberger’s ass and attribute the success of the river landing to individualism.
calm yourselves, aviation dummkopfs.
the plane captained by chesley sullenberger was landed in a river, and — supposedly miraculously — no passengers were killed or seriously injured. as the plane sank, apparently the captain and first officer correctly spent every available minute ensuring all were out.
assume for now that in the approach and landing sullenberger did something few pilots could. out come the strained false attempts to link sullenberger to the free market exclusively, away from his statist roots. according to the increasingly stupid lew rockwell, sullenberger’s air force training is to be discounted entirely because “there they train you to machine-gun, rocket, and bomb strangers on orders–not quite the same thing.”
my ass. talk about some cherry-picking ignorance. lew has never known aviation. still doesn’t. he speaks of sullenberger “being hailed by the state media as a product of the federal government”, but there’s pretty much no “legal” pilot trained in the US who isn’t a product of fedgoon horse shit interference. one of the best pilots i ever flew with was retired USN. reaching into a hat and pulling out of this market-soiling mess a pristine individualist “private” pilot is part of a long trend at LRC/LvMI.
but the profoundly offensive bit is touting the rarity of clean water landings in land planes as if every pilot who didn’t have a clean one sucked. commoner stupidity at its worst, and LRC jumped on the wagon with the lot of morons. even the normally exceptionally sane chris manion partook.
what else? it emerged later that a major water-landing checklist item (sealing) was missed. yeah, they didn’t have shit for time, but don’t gloss over it. here’s an uncomfortable question: what about this captain miracle not even knowing what fucking airport he was looking at? i was merely a crap-ass weekend private pilot and i regularly briefed not only my return-to-airport altitude, but nearest emergency landing fields (as in farmer’s fields, often) during initial climbout — yes, at less than half the speed and with exponentially less ground to brief. these things should be executed nearly automatically, not mulled in the moment while conferring with ATC to get the name of teterboro airport, a staple of NYC aviation. a professional airline pilot should know the emergency field(s) for climbout, in that direction, for those winds (including winds at altitude). he should be turning there while establishing best glide speed, about 1.5 seconds after confirming power loss. no discussion. no conferring with ATC (aviate, navigate, communicate).
maybe chesley sullenberger is the badass of badasses, but you cannot conclude that simply because the landing — in a fucking river, i remind — was tight. what was the takeoff emergency brief? he knows the direction of flight but not teterboro airport without looking, forget on sight? this is evidence of complacency, not excellence. though you can praise sullenberger with jerking knee after everything’s touted peachy (airplane destroyed), the alleged radio chatter indicates strongly that he let himself get lulled into figuring he’d never have a complete power failure on climbout.
single-engine slacker me writing in 2005:
i stole a crew briefing habit from the pros for takeoffs, but converted to my one-man crew: before every fresh takeoff (first of the day, or at a new place), i’d talk through what i was going to do if the engine failed during/after takeoff. what’s my turnaround altitude for that airport? where’s my emergency landing spot if i’m too low to turn around? if i’m to land into trees, will i keep the plane coming down, or pull the stick into my chest and hope there’s no such thing as physics? will i stall above the trees and plop down like a rock, or allow the tops of the trees to slow me gradually?if at a new field, i like to see an aerial pic and talk to locals about best place to land if engine failure after takeoff.
unfortunately, i also swore by the old saying, “if you’re relaxing, there’s something you’re not doing that you could be.” my examiner was a big one for covering the oil pressure gauge and asking, “what letter is the needle over?” it’s a good point; you should know where those trend gauges are, if not by letter, at least something useful. “if your engine quit right now, where would you land?” same thing.
now one of you LRC fucks wanna tell me the reported interaction with ATC evinces the same level of planning for a pro flight?
i don’t know, but i would not be surprised if it slowly surfaces that the river landing wasn’t necessary.
wonderful that nobody was seriously hurt and that it was a rare, seemingly miraculous ditch. however, i’m not buying the “straight outta central casting” drool; too many variables and unknowns, people writing the story they’d most want to hear.
shouldn’t have to mention, but here’s the final point that seems to have been bullshitted into nothingness: the first asses the pilots saved were their own. they were not awakened from a deep sleep and told that they needed to give it their all pronto to pilot remotely a stranger-filled airplane that had just lost both engines. they were right there with the passengers, so fuck off with the “heroism” routine, for it’s fundamentally no different from the lies slathered on state goons. it was rational self interest (even the post-ditch sweep), with perhaps far more luck and hidden error than is being asserted via mass inconsiderate acclaim.