Highest Duty_ My Search for What Really Matters - Chesley B. Sullenberger [58]
Until Flight 1549, I had assumed that I would always live a pretty anonymous life. I’d try to do my job to the best of my ability. Lorrie and I would try to raise the girls with the values we cherish. I’d make an effort to volunteer for worthy projects. Perhaps, I thought, at the end of my life, in aggregate, it would all add up to my being able to say I’d made a difference to others and to my community in some small way.
Actually, I live in several communities. One is Danville, of course. But another is the community that keeps re-creating itself in the nation’s airports. It’s a community of familiar faces—airport workers, my colleagues at US Airways, the crews from other airlines—that also includes thousands of strangers who repopulate the terminals every day.
An airport is not always an easy place to connect meaningfully with other people. We’re all coming and going, trying to get somewhere else and then home. But there are little ways to show humanity, and I’ve admired those who find ways to do so.
A PILOT’S job, first and foremost, is to fly the airplane safely, delivering passengers from Point A to Point B. We have checklists outlining a host of other tasks, too. But there are many things that are not in our job description, things that are the responsibility of gate agents, baggage handlers, skycaps, caterers, cleaners.
Most of these people do their jobs well, but an airport and an airline are not perfect systems. That can be frustrating for travelers and for those of us in the industry. If I can help things along, I try to do so.
There was one time when we had flown from Philadelphia to Hartford, Connecticut, landing at 10:30 P.M. A young couple in their thirties with a toddler waited and waited on the jetway for their stroller, but it never showed up. I wanted to help them. My attitude with passengers in these situations is this: I’ve gotten you this far. I’m not going to leave you hanging now.
I went down the stairs and out to the ramp and talked to the baggage handlers. Then I came back and told the couple that the stroller was either lost or left in Philly. “Come with me,” I told them.
I walked the couple to baggage claim and showed them where to file a claim. It was late. The lights in the terminal were being shut off. If I didn’t get them to the right place, they’d be stuck in the airport with everything closed, including the baggage office.
A flight attendant saw me helping them and commented that not every pilot or flight attendant would bother to help. It was an awfully simple thing I had done. I barely had to walk out of my way, since I was headed to a hotel van right outside of baggage claim.
And yet, I understood completely what this flight attendant meant.
A lot of people in the airline industry, and especially at my airline, US Airways, feel beaten down by circumstance. We’ve been hit by an economic tsunami. Some people feel their companies have held a gun to their heads, demanding concessions. We’ve been through pay cuts, givebacks, downsizing, layoffs. We’re the working wounded.
People get tired of constantly fighting the same battles over and over again every day. The gate agent hasn’t pulled the jetway up to the plane in time. The skycap is supposed to bring the wheelchair and hasn’t. (I’ve helped more than a few older people into wheelchairs and pushed them into the terminal myself.) The caterer hasn’t brought all the first-class meals. Catering companies always seem to be the lowest bidders with the highest employee turnover. At the end of a long day, you and your crew will get off the plane and make your way out of the terminal, but the hotel van isn’t there when it’s supposed to be.
All of this stuff beats you down. You get tired of constantly trying to correct what you corrected yesterday.
Many pilots and other airline workers feel that if they keep picking up all the slack, those who run the companies