Originally Posted by
ATC Watcher
Great Story fdr !
Back to the question : Jeff Skiles the co pilot of the US Hudson flight makes an excellent presentation explaining the various and numerous lucks they had that day. ( outside of hitting the birds that is !) and basically you cannot train for luck.
A photo of the aircraft the next morning , with ice plates everywhere on the Hudson and lots of ferries crossing in the background shows already 2 of those lucks.
I had the pleasure of meeting Jeff at a party at Oshkosh a couple of years ago. Everyone was still asking about Cactus, and he was politely answering the same questions for the umpteenth time. He had been selected to fly "Fifi", at the time the only remaining flying B-29, into Oshkosh for the show. When I asked him what it was like to fly"Fifi", his face lit up and he went into an animated description of landing the beast and having only differential braking for steering control, among other hilarious aspects involved in flying to old bird. I'd love to run into him this year and hear about what treasure he flew in this time.