Captain Sully just announced that he has Alzheimer’s.
He’s the man who brought US Airways flight 1549 safely down into the Hudson River on January 15, 2009 after a double bird strike, allowing everyone on board to get off safely.
He was later unanimously confirmed by the Senate as President Biden’s pick to be U.S. representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization, with the rank of ambassador. He retired from US Airways after 30 years of flying in 2010, and was portrayed by Tom Hanks in a movie version of the fateful flight for which he became famous.
Chesley Sullenberger reports that it’s ‘early stage’ Alzheimer’s.
For now, this means a name may not come easily to me, I forget a story I have recently told, or I don’t sleep as well, but I am in the beginning of this long journey.
He plans to become outspoken about the disease, drawing on the ‘courage’ that was shown with flight 1549 ‘battle this disease.’
Credit: Greg Lam Pak Ng, via Wikimedia Commons (image upscaled)
The movie Sully wasn’t very good on the whole, but the entire thing was worth it for the flight sequence.
Two years ago, Sullenberger 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 the aircraft slowly appeared to descend into the water while passengers waited to hopefully be rescued.
Relive the minute-by-minute replay of Flight 1549, a day that demanded the best of humanity and teamwork. Join me in remembering this pivotal moment on its 15th anniversary. Part 2 coming soon. #CaptSully #News #Flight1549 #MiracleOnTheHudson #15thAnniversary pic.twitter.com/Aa11nx5IiB
— Sully Sullenberger (@Captsully) January 15, 2024
Here are five surprising things you may not have known about the incident and its aftermath.
- Cabin crew didn’t know they hadn’t landed on the ground until they opened the aircraft door and saw water.
- Passengers on the flight were given top tier elite status for a year.
- When US Airways CEO Doug Parker traveled to New York after US Airways 1549 crashed into the Hudson he left his briefcase in the parking garage – and they had to evacuate US Airways headquarters in Tempe thinking it was a bomb.
- Parker had been in a meeting with American Express when it happened. Amex was going to increase the holdback on credit card charges, withholding payments from customers as a bigger cushion against risk of the airline’s bankruptcy. That could have pushed them into bankruptcy. But he got pulled out of the meeting before they could deliver the message.
- Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas created a Miracle On The Hudson cocktail. At the time my first thought was, while the plane may have ‘gone in the drink’ surely nobody believes that the water in the Hudson is blue?
New Flights restaurant @MiracleMileLV Shops has a blue cocktail called "Miracle on the Hudson" featuring a small plastic airplane floating in it. pic.twitter.com/HL3BPDgQNO
— Vital Vegas (@VitalVegas) August 16, 2019
Sully you will always be my hero!
Godspeed Hero!
Hero indeed!
Damn. That sucks. He and his crew are my heroes.
Sully is a good person but highly accusatory towards doctors. He wrongly believes that sepsis is like an altimeter that points to a number. When it points a certain way, it’s sepsis. It is not so clear cut that way. His anti-sepsis campaign and blaming it on doctors is just like blaming him for US1549. That is really weird.
The correct way is for the general public to be aware of sepsis and to not blow it off thinking it’s nothing to be concerned about. On the other hand, Alzheimer’s often causes lack of judgment, which Sully has about sepsis.
Here’s to Sully. It was great flying on 1/15/2009.
Welp, we made it 5 comments before someone decided to besmirch our hero. (Honestly, better than I expected for this site.)
HERO, (noun) someone who does their job. Sully did his job.
@Pilot93434 — And you’ve landed how many aircraft (with no power) safely into the Hudson?
With over 28,000 hours, I’ve not crashed or dented any airplanes or gotten any of my passengers wet. Of course it’s not Sullys fault geese flew into his engines. He did his job. And you’ve piloted how many airliners?
@Pilot93434 — That’s nice. So, you’ve landed zero aircraft safely into the Hudson. Noted. (I’m not a pilot. I’m four numbers, remember.)
I have 7K flight hrs (all in the USAF). I truly believe under identical circumstances virtually ALL pilots would have performed essentially exactly how Sully did in his Hudson landing. This is not meant to take a shot at Sully, it just happened to be his number that came up that day.
@David Moore — Ok, fine, there are a lot of great pilots out there. You’re all heroes in your own way, whether 7K flight hours or over 4x that. (Is that better, @Pilot 93434? I do respect what you do. By the way, 28K is a lot. Seriously, like 3+ decades-worth. You still flying commercial, cargo, private, or retired now?)
David Moore, that is highly unlikely kid. If anything Sully’s glider time at the prepared him better than any sim time or flight time. Many pilots have cocked-up water ditchings (there are videos of some too) so no not all pilots could do it but some could. (I have 1,000s of USAF hours too so spare me any feckless response on that).
@Jim LeJeune — I’m thoroughly enjoying the pilots on here calling-rank. Fellas, you’ve earned those flight-hours. Use ’em (on this very-very-serious blog)! But, let’s settle this, once-and-for-all, is merely ‘doing your job’ simply ‘professionalism,’ or is it literal Sully-level ‘heroism’ as some suggest?
Sully and his true are true heroes.
They brought everyone home safely.
I do not consider Sully to be a hero.
He was an expert and displayed outstanding skill.
I asked ChatGPT and the response…
There are a few distinct issues here:
* **Sepsis is often diagnostically difficult.** Unlike an aircraft altimeter, which (assuming it’s functioning correctly) provides a direct measurement, sepsis has no single definitive bedside test that immediately identifies it. Clinicians synthesize vital signs, laboratory values, imaging, physical examination, the patient’s history, and how the patient changes over time. Early sepsis can resemble many other conditions, and many non-septic illnesses can resemble sepsis.
* **Medicine involves uncertainty.** Physicians frequently make decisions with incomplete information. A patient may not meet criteria for sepsis at one point in time but develop clearer signs hours later. That does not automatically mean the earlier assessment was negligent.
* **Missing sepsis is not automatically malpractice.** The legal standard for malpractice is generally whether the clinician met the applicable standard of care, not whether the outcome was poor. A delayed diagnosis may reflect negligence in some cases, but in others it may occur despite reasonable evaluation because the presentation was atypical or evolving.
* **Even optimal care cannot prevent all sepsis deaths.** Sepsis remains a leading cause of death worldwide despite advances in recognition and treatment. Earlier antibiotics and source control improve outcomes on average, but they do not guarantee survival.
* **Overtreatment also has costs.** Giving broad-spectrum antibiotics and aggressive sepsis treatment to everyone with possible infection would expose many patients who do not have sepsis to risks such as allergic reactions, antibiotic-associated complications (including *C. difficile* infection), kidney injury from some medications, unnecessary invasive procedures, excess intravenous fluids, and increased antimicrobial resistance. Good clinical practice seeks to balance the risk of missing sepsis against the harms of overtreatment.
Regarding Captain Chesley, his advocacy has generally emphasized improving recognition of sepsis and learning from adverse events. Public awareness campaigns often simplify messages because they are intended to encourage patients and clinicians to think about a condition that is frequently underrecognized.
It’s also worth noting that aviation and medicine, while both high-reliability fields, differ in important ways. Aviation benefits from highly standardized systems, relatively predictable physics, and instruments designed to measure specific parameters. Medicine deals with complex, variable human biology, where the “signal” is often noisy and incomplete. Experts in both fields have written about applying aviation safety principles to medicine, but they generally acknowledge these differences and caution against assuming that every medical decision can be reduced to a clear checklist or instrument reading.
Simplified messaging is common in public health because nuanced messages can be harder to communicate broadly.
@derek — You do you, but, maybe, consider, instead of forcing ChatGPT to do your dirty work for you, couldn’t you have just repeated what you already said before, without a copy-and-paste of several trash paragraphs which no human will ever read or care about? I mean, I highly doubt you even quickly proofread what the LLM even spat out at you… *burp*
@ Derek. Hospitals operating with tip top sanitation protocols like consistent hand washing would do much to lessen patients getting infected. For the reasons you cited it is virtually impossible for sue for sepsis picked up at a hospital. I my view, lawsuits would focus the hospital on following gold standard procedures. Hospitals are very dangerous places to be.