Highest Duty_ My Search for What Really Matters - Chesley B. Sullenberger [71]
A few years ago, in Flying magazine, I read a column written by an airline captain who was nearing retirement. He was remembering his earliest days as a pilot, and comparing those days with today, when all airline employees, including pilots, are judged on their ability to follow rules. “We were hired for our judgment,” he wrote. “Now we are being evaluated on our compliance.”
In many ways, it’s good that all airlines are more standardized today. There are appropriate procedures and we are bound to follow them. These days there are virtually no cowboys in the skies, ignoring items on their checklists. At the same time, however, I am concerned that compliance alone is not sufficient. Judgment—like Al Slader’s decision—is paramount.
The way the best pilots see it: A captain’s highest duty and obligation is always to safety. As we say it: “We have the power of the parking brake.” The plane will not move until we feel we can operate the aircraft safely.
With authority comes great responsibility. A captain needs leadership skills to take the individuals on his crew and make them feel and perform like a team. It’s a heavy professional burden on the captain to know he may be called upon to tap into the depths of his experience, the breadth of his knowledge, and his ability to think quickly, weighing everything he knows while accounting for what he cannot know.
I long have had great respect for pilots such as Al Haynes, Al Slader, and many others. And I believe that my knowledge and understanding of their actions was of great help to me on Flight 1549 as I made decisions in those tense moments over New York City.
12
THE VIEW FROM ABOVE
NO TWO AIRPORTS are exactly alike. They’re almost like fingerprints in that way. Each one has a different geometry, runway layout, and arrangement of taxiways and terminal buildings. Each one differs in its direction and distance from the city center, and proximity to other landmarks.
I’ve never counted how many different runways I’ve landed on. I couldn’t tell you the exact number of cities I’ve seen from the air. But I try to pay attention to the specific details of a place, and to hold on to a mental picture of the view. It could be helpful the next time I return, even if it’s years later.
When pilots fly regular routes to a certain city, we become very familiar with what the area’s landmarks look like from the air. From as high as twenty-five or thirty thousand feet, we can identify the tallest buildings, the local stadiums, the nearest large bodies of water, the major highways. We know the configurations of the runways, the seasonal weather conditions, and, once on the ground, the best place to get a reasonably healthy lunch in the terminal.
Given the US Airways hub system, I’ve done a lot of flying into Charlotte, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, so takeoffs and landings in those cities are a pilot’s equivalent of driving your car out of your driveway and through your neighborhood.
On so many flights, I find myself thinking the same thoughts: about how beautiful Earth is—both the natural and the manmade beauty—and how lucky we are to call it our home.
There are many parts of the country I enjoy flying over or into. Approaching St. Louis on a clear day, you can see the 630-foot-tall Gateway Arch from ten miles away and 30,000 feet up. If the sun is at the right angle, you’ll find sunlight glistening off the edge of the arch.
Flying into Las Vegas, in the