Highest Duty_ My Search for What Really Matters - Chesley B. Sullenberger [32]
Lorrie and I have vowed to appreciate each other, appreciate our two daughters, appreciate every day. We don’t always maintain that positive attitude. We still have our arguments. But that’s our goal.
And so, yes, I choked up seeing our two teenage daughters arm in arm, skipping down that street at Lake Tahoe. It reminded me of what I’ve missed, and that was hard for me. But it also reminded me of how lucky we all are to have one another, and why we have a duty to try to live happily together, from a place of gratitude.
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FAST, NEAT, AVERAGE
WHEN PASSENGERS ARE awaiting takeoff on a commercial plane, I’m guessing that most of them don’t give a lot of thought to how the pilots in the cockpit got their jobs. Passengers seem most concerned about when they have to turn off their cell phones, or whether it’s still possible to use the restroom before the cabin door is closed. They wonder about making their connecting flights, or being stuck in the middle seat. They’re not thinking about the pilot’s training or experience. I understand that.
Some passengers boarding Flight 1549 at LaGuardia said they had noticed my gray hair, which they equated with experience. But none of them asked about my résumé, my flight record, or my educational background. And why would they? As they should, they trusted that my airline, US Airways, had rigorously selected its pilots based on federally mandated criteria.
And yet, every pilot has a very personal story of how he or she ended up in control of that type of aircraft and in that particular airline’s cockpit. We all had our own unique paths and career progressions, and then found our way to commercial aviation. We don’t often talk about all the steps we took, even among ourselves, but every time we pilot a flight, we are bringing with us all of the things we’ve learned over the thousands of hours and millions of miles we’ve flown.
Until the mid-1990s, 80 percent of pilots working for major airlines were trained in the military, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Now, just 40 percent of newly hired pilots get their training in the military. The rest come through civilian training programs, including some two hundred universities that offer aviation training. The World War II and Korean veterans—my mentors when I started—retired as commercial pilots more than two decades ago, after turning sixty years old, then the mandatory retirement age. There aren’t a great many Vietnam-era pilots left either, even though the retirement age was raised to sixty-five in 2007.
As for myself, I am grateful that I came into aviation through the military. I appreciate the discipline taught to me during my days in the Air Force, and the many hours of intense training I received. In some civilian programs, pilots aren’t always taught with the same rigor.
I was tested in so many significant ways during my time in the service that I sometimes look back and wonder: How did I make it through? How did I succeed when some didn’t? How was I able to complete every flight, landing my plane safely, when others I knew and respected didn’t make it safely to the runway and lost their lives? As I look back, I reflect on the intersections of preparation and circumstance, and that helps me understand.
MY MILITARY career provided many of the important steps along the way. The initiation to my military life began in the spring of 1969, when I was a senior in high school and went to see my congressman, Ray Roberts, at his office in the ranching town of McKinney. Then fifty-six years old, he was a well-regarded Democratic leader in Texas, who six years earlier had been in President Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas. He was four cars behind the presidential limousine when the shots were fired.
I had come to Representative