It's an inspiring tale with compelling characters. Warm fuzzies and hero-worship aside, and with all due respect, I'm more interested in its lessons.Captain C.B. "Sully" Sullenberger has been in the spotlight, and understandably so. In interview after interview, he's been prodded to describe how Air Force training, 30 years of flying commercial aircraft and experience as a glider jockey combined to produce a textbook splash-landing on January 15th.
Sullenberger, however, doesn't take the bait. He knows better:
"I think, in many ways, as it turned out, my entire life up to that moment had been a preparation to handle that particular moment."Notice that Sullenberger doesn't stow his flying, crucial as it was that day, in some separate compartment. He recognizes that Sully landed that crippled Airbus A320 -- and that Sully is a helluva lot more than a crackerjack stick-and-rudder guy.
He's also a husband and a father, a businessman, a student and an educator, an accident investigator and more, the sum and the product of 58 years. He's a lifetime of knowledge and skills, discipline and mindset, rational thoughts and human emotions.
What Sullenberger is trying to tell us, really, is that it wasn't the pilot who brought that plane down safely -- it was the man.
I also was struck by the words of Flight 1549 passenger Jim Hanks:
"One of the things I discovered is that in a situation like this, you have to survive more than once."Think about that for a second -- "you have to survive more than once." Hanks continues:
"You have to survive the crash, the landing, which we did. And then you have to survive whatever comes afterwards, whether it's a fire or, in this case, water filling the back of the cabin very quickly. And then you have to survive whatever comes after that, which...on this day was a 20-degree air temperature...."A critical incident -- and riding a powerless 70-ton airliner into an icy river definitely qualifies -- seldom is a single, simple event. It's a series of critical moments, each of which demands evaluation, decision and action.
Survival isn't assured until survival is secured. Misjudgment, poor choices, hesitation and inaction, alone or in combination, can draw the ominous line between survivor and casualty. The passengers and crew of Flight 1549 stand today on the bright side of that line because they survived moment after defining moment.
Hanks, Sullenberger and the others have still more surviving to do, of course. They must navigate the glare of celebrity, the inevitable emotional trauma and the expectations of family and friends who can't grasp the changes wrought by a near-death experience.
They also have much to teach. Sullenberger demonstrates that living is learning, and that it's the whole person, shaped by life, who acts. And Hanks reminds us that outcomes are the result of actions building on actions. We survive one moment at a time, standing on a foundation of choices we've made.
There's more, I'm sure. To learn, all we have to do is listen.
