Highest Duty_ My Search for What Really Matters - Chesley B. Sullenberger [98]
In the wake of the tragedy, Karen said, she was able to find a path to acceptance and a new appreciation for life. “Following Mom’s funeral in Florida,” she wrote, “we flew with her ashes and Dad’s to inter them in Toledo, Ohio. However, our flight was caught in horrible turbulence. We were all terrified, but in those moments I vowed that if we were able to land, I would find a way to (1) grow through these terrible times and not become bitter, and (2) continue to fly, as I lecture internationally.”
Bart Simon, who owns a hair-products company in Cleveland, told me he was on USAir Flight 405 when it attempted takeoff from LaGuardia on the night of March 22, 1992, and crashed in Flushing Bay. “I was one of the lucky ones who walked away with just a small cut on my head,” Bart wrote. Twenty-seven people died, and nine of the twenty-three other survivors had serious injuries. The National Transportation Safety Board later said the probable causes were ice on the wings, failures of the FAA and the airline industry to have appropriate procedures regarding icing and delays, and the flight crew’s decision to take off without knowing for sure that the wings were free of ice.
“I had been successful in putting that evening out of my mind and getting on with my life,” Bart told me, “but the pictures of your landing last month and the similarity of the circumstances—US Airways, LaGuardia, the water—brought the memories rushing back.” He wrote that when he watched our crew on TV, it seemed as if we epitomized what passengers hope to find when they board flights: professionals who are “cool, calm, and most of all, in command, no matter how dire the circumstances.” He said he was writing to say thanks “on behalf of the millions of us who entrust our lives to you and your fellow pilots every year.”
He had boarded a plane out of LaGuardia bound for Cleveland the very morning after that 1992 crash. “The charred remains of Flight 405 were clearly visible in Flushing Bay as my plane taxied by, but I left that morning calm in the knowledge that a skilled professional was at the controls, and that in a short time I would be back home.”
As pilots, we sometimes sense that passengers have no awareness of us. It’s as if they’re just pushing their way past the cockpit, looking for space in the overhead compartments. But in the wake of Flight 1549, I’ve been able to hear from people such as Karen Kaiser Clark and Bart Simon, and it is humbling to contemplate the faith and trust that they and others like them have placed in us.
THERESA HUNSICKER, who runs a day-care center in Louisiana, learned about Flight 1549 while watching Fox News. A forty-three-year-old mother of a nine-year-old girl, she saw me on 60 Minutes and felt compelled to write about how my interview had affected her.
“My name is Theresa Hunsicker,” her letter began, “and I am the daughter of Richard Hazen, who was the copilot of ValuJet 592. It went down in the Florida Everglades on May 11, 1996, with 110 people on board.”
Flight 592 had taken off from Miami International Airport, headed for Atlanta, with Captain Candalyn Kubeck at the controls. About six minutes into the flight, she and First Officer Hazen reported fire in the plane’s interior and smoke in the cockpit. On the cockpit recording, a female voice is heard shouting from the cabin: “Fire, fire, fire, fire!”
First Officer Hazen radioed to the controller, asking to return to the airport. A few minutes later, traveling at five hundred miles per hour, it crashed in the Everglades. The plane was destroyed on impact.
An investigation revealed that the jet was carrying chemical oxygen generators in its cargo compartment, which likely started or fueled the fire. The oxygen generators