Takes a Serious Contrarian to Go After Captain "Sully" Sullenberger's Heroic Image

Russ Buettner, NY Times:

In America today, the half-life of newly minted hero status seems to end the moment that Oprah’s jaw drops. No sooner does someone amaze us than someone else seeks to diminish their splendor.

But Sully?

In a new book, “Fly by Wire,” William Langewiesche takes a run at knocking down the hero rank of Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III, the US Airways pilot who in January glided a powerless Airbus A320 to an emergency landing in the Hudson River, according to a review published in The New York Times on Wednesday.

Mr. Langewiesche argues that Captain Sullenberger’s landing did not display “unusual skill.” Instead, he posits that perhaps the real hero was Bernard Ziegler, a former Airbus executive credited with helping the airline develop what is known as a fly-by-wire control system, which eased the difficulties of handling an aircraft.

“Like it or not, Ziegler reached out across the years and cradled them all the way to the water,” writes Mr. Langewiesche, who is himself a former professional pilot.

I can't offer a review of Langewiesche's book -- haven't read it. And while I can't see how it could be anything other than an act of unusual skill to land a loaded jetliner without thrust on a narrow river in the middle of a densely packed city without injury, I won't try to dispute his argument. William Langewiesche is a pretty brilliant writer and, as the excerpt indicates, he, unlike myself, is a former professional pilot.

But I've got to ask why? Why bother writing a book to muddy Sully's heroic image?

One answer is self-evident: here I am writing about a book I haven't read, and here you are reading about it. The premise is guaranteed to get attention; the book will no doubt promote itself to some degree.

I'll also confess, as a writer, that I know it can be fun to tweak readers now and then by writing something contrarian, something you know will piss people off. Chris Hitchens may have been drunk off his ass when he savagely attacked Mother Theresa, but he didn't do it because he was sauced. (He had to have been at least half-way sober -- it was some of his finest work.)

But while I'm sure it's quite important for aviation professionals to work out exactly what they can learn from that "water-landing", I'm perfectly satisfied to leave it as Sully's "miracle on the Hudson," even at the risk of self-delusion.

Hell, we live in very strange and pretty dark times when you think about it. We're knee-deep in a couple of useless and lethal foreign occupations that our political class lacks the will and resolve to conclude, the economy is stuttering, we're facing all this extremism everywhere and we face big-picture problems like global warming, peak oil, pandemic diseases and on and on. And then, after an ugly, 43-year presidential campaign, and just days before we bid adieu to the horrendous years of the Bush regime, this incredibly uplifting story came like a beam of light breaking through the clouds. A sweet book-end to another aircraft incident in NY at the beginning of the previous administration.

And even if we concede Langewiesche's point -- and from what little I know, I understand that fly-by-wire technology has probably saved thousands of air passengers, in addition to giving pilots the ability to control unstable platforms like the "flying wing" design of the B 2 bomber -- isn't it difficult to say where the sharp line between the proficiency of an experienced pilot and the instruments he manipulates lies? Don't 'man and machine become one'? According to the Times review, Langewiesche grants that Sullenberger's "performance was a work of extraordinary concentration."

If it's a subjective line, then where one perceives it falling may ultimately be a question of what one values in a hero. Perhaps Langewiesche is a techno-file -- I know he's written some sciencey stuff in the past -- and likes the idea that the true saviors that day might have been nerdy, bespectacled European designers (or actually a "former Airbus executive credited with helping the airline develop" fly-by-wire). But given the choice between honoring some distant corporate mega-conglomerate's R & D operations or a crusty, veteran commuter pilot -- a quiet union-man, at that -- and the dozen incredibly quick decisions he made while pulling off an almost unbelievable life-saving feat with stoic calm, I know which way I'm drawn.

UPDATE: Sullenberger, while agreeing that his heroism has been overplayed, nonetheless "takes issue" with the book's thesis.

PS: Doesn't Langeweische's focus on the fly-by-wire-system remind you of that time when Homer Simpson became an astronaut, ended up saving his space-craft from destruction by jamming an inanimate carbon rod into a hatch, and then when the ship returned safely to earth it was the carbon rod that was lauded as a hero?