Comments on: Why I want to read Chesley Sullenberger’s book

By: joe

joe — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:25:16 +0000

To the guy who said any pilot could have done it ,

” Thanks for your magnificent input. You are a legend in your own mind . ”

By: Sigmund

Sigmund — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:08:03 +0000

“That needs explaining… Exactly which part of Methodist philosophy enables one to land a plane in a river?

I think the parenthetical thought was a non-sequitur…”

Yes, I was a little unclear there.
The two points weren’t meant to be related, merely that it mentions in his biography that he was a methodist when younger. The same biography mentions many aspects about his training and experiences (nothing to do with his earlier religion) that would have been useful in an emergency situation.

By: RSG

RSG — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:09:09 +0000

I’m a professional pilot, with an Airline Transport Pilot rating in helicopters, and I think the religious issue is irrelevant, other than in the Tunisian incident. If you start praying, you die, as the Tunisian pilot illustrates, along with your crew and passengers. A professional pilot has no time for praying when things go south. What you do, in the words of Bob Hoover (a pretty good pilot IMO) is “If you’re faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible.” The adage of “The Lord helps those who helps themselves” applies, and you don’t pray, you concentrate on the task at hand until it’s over or you’re dead.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:52:22 +0000

“Any pilot could have done it.”

Yes, that’s what pilots do.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:30:30 +0000

You are an asshole.

You are a poopy-face.

–Patrick Smith, “Ask the Pilot”

Never heard of him.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:27:21 +0000

Bunch of crap? You are an asshole.

Let’s listen to somebody who knows something:

“But just the same, I’m rather uneasy at calling them heroes. Nothing they did was easy, but on the whole they did what they had to do, what they were trained to do, and what, we should hope, most other crews would have done in that same situation. I reckon Sullenberger and Skiles would readily admit as much. Not out of false modesty but out of due respect for their colleagues everywhere. It was not heroics that saved the day; it was, to use a word I normally dislike, professionalism.”

–Patrick Smith, “Ask the Pilot”

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:08:14 +0000

Any pilot could have done it.

What a bunch of crap.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:10:02 +0000

The Airbus pretty much landed itself and survived the water landing the way it was designed to do. They had fully operational electrical and computer systems. Sully gets way too much credit for his role. The airplane automatically flies at the lowest possible speed without stalling. Sully just had to pull back on the side stick which told the aiplane to figure out the correct descent rate and angle of attack. The river was long and wide. Any pilot could have done it.

By: Geds

Geds — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:56:35 +0000

He was raised Methodist according to his biography

I was raised evangelical according to my biography (it’ll be published any day now, I swear!). It means nothing now…

That needs explaining… Exactly which part of Methodist philosophy enables one to land a plane in a river?

I think the parenthetical thought was a non-sequitur…

By: Azkyroth

Azkyroth — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:53:10 +0000

This rather unsavory Rabbi wrote an article a while back explaining why Berni Madoff was a hero

And decades of honest, decent people, Jewish and not, fighting against anti-Semitic stereotypes cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.