Captain Chesley B "Sully" Sullenberger III,

the pilot of the plane that he landed on the Hudson river...

Aye, that was some airmanship.
Nice one Sully!!

If that had have been in the UK he'd be a hero today, then tomorrow some tabloid would drag up some sh1te about him!

Don't wanna pee on anyones parade, but when your only option is landing in water you either get it right and become a hero, or you become a name on the memorial. Americans are always looking for a hero, Tom Cruise for the film...looking nothing like him won't matter in Hollywood.

Oh you are cynical Snowy!

Surely the co pilot should be applauded along with this Sully fella

Who do you think will play Sully in the film ..

nigel havers

Chuck Norris ,Van Damme or Ted Striker for me ..

As long as Ted Striker's got rid of his drink problem.

Don't care what you say Snowy, and the conditions may have been perfect for what he and his first officer had to try and pull off, but the fact remains he did it, and did it well. If he'd got it slightly wrong, yes he could well have been a name on a memorial along with dozens of others, but I guess he'd still have been lauded as a hero.

I'd read what I said again if I was you. He chose to land there because he had no option, it's abit like beeing on a ten story building on fire and evenetually having to jump and in true spawny fashion a lorry full of sponges drives past and you get lucky.........by the way, if he's cocked up the landing you can forget the hero status as they'd have been asking why the hell he tried to land it on water, ....sorry mate, but it's a fact that aircraft like that airbus don't land well on water.

That one did

Exactly. No point in whining on about could'ves when it blatantly happened right

Ninety nine out of every hundred people who dive in a crocodile tank get eaten... just because one survives is no reason to use it as an operating procedure.

Good analogy Snowy.

If it had gone tits up, I don't know that many would have questioned his decision. He was at 3000ish feet, lost power to both engines, unable to make it back to La Guardia or to JFK, Newark or Teterboro, and over a city. As you correctly stated Snowy, he had no choice.
And yes I know an Airbus isn't a great choice for a ditching.

Jonny Vegas

Do they?

Oh right.

Then again, I don't see ninety-nine other emergency plane landings in a river going wrong, so I don't really see what point you're making. Better than landing on the ground where buildings are though, right?

I forgot that this was a tried and tested operating procedure. Talk about trying hard to not give the bloke any credit...

Just my world weariness with the American hero ............ did you know a pilot landed aplane in Tibet and saved 45 lives...? of course not, think about it.

Snowy,

Do you have a link to that Tibet incident, I'd be intersested to read about it (genuinely!) as I didn't know about it.

Ta.

The thing that gets me is that the bloke was only doing his job... He gets paid to take over in emergencies. Planes like the Airbus can almost fly themselves the pilots are there for one reason only they can react better when it goes tits up..

He had no choice land in the riiver or crash into New York he took the obvious solution.

Congrats for a job well done, but hero?? Thats stretching it a bit.....

Sorry mate there is no incident in Tibet, my whole point was if it happened, who'd know and who'd care ... the subject of this post is a shiney American hero with a shiney wife, shiney kids, shiney house and a shiney lifestyle and we all know about it because it happens in the US and the 'meeja' managed to show it, their involvement guarantees his elevated status ... Air crashes happen all the time and those outside the developed world might make a footnote on page five if they're lucky, succesful landings will also be made and no one will bat an eyelid. It's a funny old world.

Only doing his job maybe, but if hes no hero then who is, against the odds he brought it down in one piece and everyone survived - to call a goalscorer a hero in a football game is stretching it a bit not this

Thats a bit rich isnt it, you are the first to criticise others for the opinions they express on here or when they make statements that they believe to be true with your so called clever analogies and yet here you are blatently making things up to try to add weight to your view, which if hadnt been questioned would have gone unoticed. Talk about double standards !!

My definition of an 'hero' is some one who puts them selves in harms way when they're safe, so for instance someone who jumped down from the ferry to rescue the passengers was a 'hero' in my book, someone who's in the shite already and doing their best to survive is not given a choice to be a hero. If I'm driving a car down the M1 and the wheel comes off and I end up dodging the traffic and finish up on the embankment and me and my passengers are unharmed, I'm not a 'hero', I'm a spawny get. Nowt up with being a spawny get though, beats the alternative.

Er, I told you, so therefore I wasn't trying to hide anything, if I wanted to do that, I'd have said nowt. .... it's an obvious clue but you failed to pick it up

Er - you did when someone asked you to provide the detail - not in your original post

Watty is back Watty is back, 'ello!! 'ello!!

.. and did I need to reply...?

Yeah Snowy,
I was fairly sure (though not positive) that the Tibet 'incident' didn't happen, that's why I asked for the link.
If you or one of your nearest and dearest was onboard would you still think of the pilot as the equivalent of a 'spawny get' or would you give him a tad more credit. Hypothetical I know, but I'm just picturing you stepping of the plane and saying to the Pilot 'Cheers ya spawny get!'

Did he jump on a grenade to stop it killing or maiming all the people in the vicinity, Did he storm a machine gun nest with just a sten gun??

What choice did he have as I already said crash into New York and die or crash into a river and maybe live.. He didn't really have much choice did he...

As Snowy says diliberately putting your self in harms way is one of the qualifications for being a hero in my book . Just doing your job and doing it well isn't

The guys I described initially ARE heroes in my book not just people doing their jobs well....

No you didnt - but then as per my original post you felt the need to fabricate something to add weight to your argument which was the point of my original post not the fact that you replied when it was questioned - a point which you could not defend so you then try to pass it off by saying 'well if I'd not wanted people to know it wasnt true I wouldnt have answered when questioned - if you werent trying to create the impression it was true why post it in the first place

I'd just have said ... "spawny get", he's not getting a "cheers" off me after ruining my fookin baggage.

..ithasn't stoped youThe whole point was to highlight the fact if this incident had happened off camera in the Gobi desert or Tibet, no one would have given a toss ....... but if that's how you want to play it, ....... fair enough.

what about that pilot who landed his plane at heathrow with engine failure?

Of course there's no incident in Tibet. Snowy simply set another person up with a half-baked analogy

I did think about what you said, and I've realised that planes can be landed in calm conditions on a river in downtown New York on a clear day and not on a terrain without flat land, decent conditions and the like.

I'll must ask though, do you reckon the pilot fries his eggs in a frying pan or in a sieve made from chocolate? Think about it...

The bloke guided a plane that was fooked through a massive cityscape onto a river. The airport in New Jersey was too far away and he couldn't turn back to La Guardia. Everyone survived and only one person had a relatively serious injury (two broken legs).

I'd rather have a good tale like that on the front page than dullards describing the same old politics or credit crunch, or comparing things with incomprehensible gibberish

The day that plane ditched, a Mil 17 helicopter crashed in Afghanistan killing all 13 on board....... a day later a French Navy Cougar helicopter from the Frech warship Le Fondre crashed on take of from the ship, there were 7 fatalities, all happened either side of the ditching in the Hudson and not one of us knew a thing about it, because the media knows the world is full of people like you who'd 'rather have a good tale' ... and that's the whole point of my post, the 'media' decide who the heroes are gonna be and the people who 'like a good tale' will always clap their approval.

p.s, if you want to dispute these crashes, I'll happily supply the details.

To be fair the burning suicide bomber was standing in the doorway of the wines and spirits section of duty free at the time.

In Scotland he'd have probably got a bat if he was a Vicar standing in the same place.

Silly place to stand when you're burning.

Whats next Flight 571 over the Andes..Would you if you where starving ..

I don't tell any really good tales in my job, so being so accusatory isn't particularly well-founded. Still, pick up a paper that's more happy than sad about events and I'll happily back down. The world we live in is shit, and given this happened in the biggest city in the world a few years after the biggest plane-based event is hardly going to be overlooked. You're either living in a ridiculously unattainably idealistic world or you're just splitting hairs for the sake of it.

The angle that plane needed to be landed at was so ridiculous that any regular trajectory on a runway with wheels would have likely split the plane in two and killed most of the people on board. To undermine the landing skill just because of a fascination to be some kind of parade-pissing doom-mongerer is just unfair. Give the bloke his credit. Would you have only found it acceptable news if loads of people kicked the bucket? Get real...

Instead of getting wound up over what you think I've said, try rerading what I meant, which briefly is ...... that the media make the heroes, ... and because most coverage is in the States, all the heroes are Americans. It's a pity that because of this, the people of the world who don't have this advantage don't even show up on the radar. I'm tired of the American monopoly of all our 'heroes' real or fictional, it's getting hard to distinguish between the two. If you don't approve of my disapproval, we'll just have to agree to disagree., because I have my opinion and you have yours and they aint gonna meet are they....?

I can't see what the fuss is about the guy did what he's paid to do land the plane... Yes he did save a lot of peoples live but was ONLY DOING WHAT HE GETS PAID TO DO....

He may have done it in extraordinary circumstances but thats all he really did...

And as I've said before what other options did he have....



By your definition every pilot who takes off and lands a plane is a hero...

He made the best of a bad situation.

Pierrepoint wrote


No, that's not what we're saying. Try 'every pilot who takes off, loses power to all engines, over a city, with around 3500 feet of altitude to play with and then tries to put the plane down on water where he has to angle the plane in a manner that is not the norm and also perfectly level because of the two engines slung under his wings, which as soon as they hit the water act as huge brakes, knowing if one engine goes in before the other the probability is that there'll be many deaths, admittedly his own included . . . . . is a hero' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and you'll then be a bit closer to the mark.



This is what can happen



and yes, I know the pilots situation was somewhat different in this case, but you get the idea.

So tell what other option he had....

Not a Hero just someone who's good at his job and did it extremely well when required to do so.....

If you read my other posts, you'll see that I've already acknowleged that he had no option than to attempt what he did. I don't think the fact that he had no alternative should detract from what he did.
It's obvious we all have different ideas of heroism. Some people have a choice about an act that may subsequently called heroic, others don't. It doesn't mean that those that don't have that choice are not heroic. Or at least that's my opinion, and I respect that yours (and Snowy's) is different.

No problem with that I agree totally with what you're saying on this one.

We've all got different viewpoints on this and getting nowhere fast, so what say we tuck it in, turn the light off and let it go to sleep.

Night Night!!