15th Anniversary Replay: Capt. Sullenberger Recounts Flight 1549’s Harrowing Hudson River Landing

by Gary Leff

Captain Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger was captain pilot of US Airways flight 1549 which went down in a ditching in the Hudson River after a double bird strike. He was played by Tom Hanks in the eponymous film – the movie as a whole wasn’t very good but the entire thing was worth it for the flight sequence.

Now for the 15th anniversary of the flight, Sullenberger has narrated a “minute by minute replay” of what happened January 15, 2009. I still remember watching on TV in my office, with baited breath as I watched the aircraft slowly appear to descend into the water while passengers waited to hopefully be rescued.

Here are four surprising things you may not have known about the incident and its aftermath.

Sullenberger was nominated by President Biden and unanimously confirmed by the Senate as U.S. representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization, equivalent in rank to a U.S. ambassador.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  2. The movie was actually pretty good if you like documentary movies that don’t hype up a lot of unnecessary parts for the cameras.

    What? I remember most about the situation though, is how yet another big corporation just had to scapegoat somebody. They couldn’t accept the fact that it was entirely the fault of that flock of birds, or I guess the environmentalist could say the fault of humans civilization for impeding on those birds with unnatural stuff in the air. But either way it was not his fault, as we later saw. But, all the stress and scapegoating that they put him and his wife through, most likely also as a nice opportunity for an attempt to swindle him out of retirement, it’s unfortunate that he couldn’t get some lawyers and sue the piss out of them.

    It was really nothing more than a case of finding the easiest scapegoat and assuming that people wouldn’t just accept the birds of nature versus man as the real reason here.

  4. @Daniel: None of the conflict with the NTSB happened in real life. If was conflict to make the movie more interesting.

    Because of that, the names of the members of the NTSB board were changed in the movie.

    Remember, it is a movie–not a documentary.

  5. Captain Sullenberger was one heck of a pilot on that day. I wonder what percentage of pilots could have pulled off such a landing.

  6. It is interesting that Captain Sully gets so much attention, but there is no mention of the pilot who landed an Alaska Airline with a blown out side of the plane

  7. To the author:

    1- The movie was a masterclass in understated action. I abhor Eastwood’s politics, but his skills as a director are unassailable.
    2- It’s “bated”…. bated breath, meaning anticipatory, not “baited”. Unless you were out fishing.

    You’re a reporter?

  8. @JNS: The landing was not that difficult. Every airline pilot in the U.S. could have done it.

    The real feat was making the rapid decision to land in the Hudson. I suspect a majority of pilots would have tried to make it back to LGA or divert to Teterboro. Sully is also a glider pilot, which gave him a big advantage on that issue.

    @Jack: It was a standard landing on the Alaska Air flight. And it was not a “blown out side of the plane.” It was a single door plug and did not affect the structural integrity of the aircraft.

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