MickG0105 said:
Have you ever looked at either? If so, perhaps you could point out the parts [of the NSTB hearings] where "Sully was put through the ringer".
The most aggressive questioning of Sully came from the Flight Attendants Union rep, Ms Kolander, when she pressed him on the lack of clarity that the cabin crew had about the ditching (most thought they were making a forced landing on Terra Firma), and on the capacity of the life rafts.
Yes I have. You only need to look at the first few pages of the formal transcript to understand what Capt S was required to do and the context.
This was a public hearing of the NTSB’s “Office Of Administrative Law Judges”. Capt S was in front of a Board of Inquiry and was required to answer questions asked by an NSTB safety investigator, a bloke who I think was from the French equivalent of the NTSB, Ms Kolander from the Association of Flight Attendants (as you’ve noted), a representative of the FAA, a representative of the US Airline Pilots Association, and three members of the Board of Inquiry.
You and I might disagree as to the proper metaphor for the process, but it certainly did not comprise Capt S merely explaining, in a quiet chat with an NTSB investigator, what he deemed necessary to be done in the emergency, with no further comment, and the NTSB accepting that and moving on. Capt S was, in effect, cross-examined publicly about his actions – sometimes gently in his interests and sometimes more aggressively – by a number of people outside the NTSB as well as NTSB itself. (I'm confident that no PIC of an Australian RPT aircraft would expect to be formally and publicly questioned by a representative of the Flight Attendant's Association in the wake of an incident, as part of an ATSB investigation. But I'm happy to stand corrected.)
Sure: Capt S lives happily ever after. But that’s only after he was put under intense public, NTSB-mandated scrutiny involving non-NTSB people asking him questions.
My perhaps poorly made point is that there is no magic law to the effect that a PIC’s judgments in an emergency will never be the subject of any critical scrutiny and never result in negative consequences.