I too am a frequent SLF who has read all 52 pages of this thread (including some of the postings which have been apparently subsequently whisked away by the mods) and have found them both entertaining and informative, so thank you all.
A couple of comments.
Firstly, don't fall into the trap of taking things too literally or semantically. There have been a variety of posts about the lack of recognition for the entire crew, the repugnance about the apparent hero worship of 'Sully" as well as the ignorance of the media.
I reckon we all know and believe it was crew effort; almost any professional pilot on this forum could have done the same thing; "Sully" is no super-hero, just a superbly competent professional; and journalists get things wrong (frequently). And in additon, the fates or gods conspired to line up a perfect series of circumstances to pull this one out of the fire.
But human beings are simple creatures. As any good marketer will tell you, they love a great, and well articulated, story. And turning Sully into a hero and making the whole deed heroic is part of that human need for story telling - it allows everyone to engage with the incident.
You should all bask in the reflected glory bestowed on the profession, without worrying too much about whether the facts are entirely correct or what the dictionary defintion of 'hero' may be. Every individual on that plane got home eventually despite the fact that it had two engines out. What an outcome! Sure, there will be serious lessons to be learned from it but don't try too hard to kill the amazing story, because it is the story which will be the conduit for the power of those lessons.
The second point I'd make is that I may occassionally bury my head in a newspaper during a safety briefing, but don't patronise me for it. I do so because I can quite literally recite the safety briefing (almost any one of them on any aircraft type in Asia, Euorope or the US) rote. I do not take my life or safety lightly and I always familiarise myself with the locations of the exits and the position of the life vests (or seat cushions
) prior to take off. I also run through a quick mental check list of what I would do in the event of an emergency.
So may pilots seem to have expressed in these pages that they hope if a similar set of circumstances occured to them, they would act in a similar manner to this flight crew. Similalrly I hope that, as SLF, I would do the right thing 'in the unlikley event of an emergency'. But I may not. Not because I fail to pay attention to the safety briefing or give it the gravitas it deserves, but simply because I am human.
We never know how we will react until we are tested.
Cut the SLF's some slack. They may not have donned their life vests as they should have but they are human.
Most importantly, they all got home.
Thanks and kudos to the crew, the aircraft, the circumstances, the profession, the fates, the gods, the glider pilot rating and also to human frailty as well as human achievement.
And spare a thought for the poor geese as well.
