The landing had to be perfect in several ways, he said.
“I needed to touch down with the wings exactly level,” he said. “I needed to touch down with the nose slightly up. I needed to touch down at a ”” at a descent rate that was survivable. And I needed to touch down just above our minimum flying speed, but not below it. And I needed to make all these things happen simultaneously.”
After the plane splashed down, he turned to his first officer. “We said, ”˜Well, that wasn’t as bad as I thought,’ ” he said.
The plane was evacuated and Captain Sullenberger, “after bugging people for hours,” said he finally learned that all 155 people on board had survived.
longer story here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/08/60minutes/main4783580.shtml
Oh, this has just to be one of the best lines I’ve read anywhere!
[i]He said he was concentrating so intensely that he did not say a prayer: “I would imagine somebody in back was taking care of that for me while I was flying the airplane.â€[/i]
Yes, I imagine there were plenty of passengers praying for him to land the plane safely! 🙂
It’s a guy from a different era.
It reminds me of the story a few months back about a mentally disturbed passenger on an airline becoming louder and more belligerent as the flight went on, shouting about death, bombs and whatnot. Many passengers were crying, convinced the maniac was going to somehow bring down the plane. Two guys, one a retired Marine and the other a retired detective, got together, informed the flight crew of their plan and subdued the man. All throughout the process of subuing him, the detective’s wife went on reading her novel as if nothing was going on. When asked about it, she replied that she knew her husband, and therefore knew how the episode was going to end, whereas she didn’t know how the book was going to end.
There are still heroes in America. God bless them and their families.
Perhaps this is proof that the prayers of others are effective?