Sullenberger's reponse to Langewiesche today in NYT
November 15, 2009, 8:54 pm
Sullenberger Takes Issue With New Book
By CHRISTINE NEGRONI
A new book addressing the role of automation in US Airways Flight 1549 is wrong, according to the pilot who safely landed the plane on the Hudson River in January.
In an interview on Sunday, the pilot, Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III, said that the book, “Fly By Wire,” by William Langewiesche, “greatly overstates how much it mattered” that the plane he landed in the river, an Airbus A320, featured an automated cockpit. Mr. Sullenberger said the outcome of the emergency landing he made on Jan. 15, after the jet’s engines were knocked out by geese strikes shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia, would have been the same whether the plane was an electronically controlled Airbus or a more conventional Boeing.
In his book, subtitled “The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson,” Mr. Langewiesche praised the engineers behind the Airbus’s highly automated aircraft. He said that by creating an airplane that will not allow pilots to go outside certain flight parameters, they devised a craft that “will intervene to keep people alive.”
Since the day that he and his co-pilot, Jeffrey B. Skiles, landed the plane on the river, Mr. Sullenberger has tried to tone down a public perception that he is a hero. He says credit for the fact that all 155 passengers and crew members survived the ditching should be spread around. But when it comes to the role of the Airbus, Mr. Sullenberger said, its impact was minor.
“Others in the industry knowledgeable about these technical issues know there are misstatements of fact in ‘Fly by Wire,’ ” Mr. Sullenberger said. His own book about the event, “Highest Duty,” is largely a memoir, though he does devote several pages to the fly-by-wire technology.
“There are some situations where the automation will protect a pilot, but at the same time a highly automated airplane makes possible other types of errors * so it’s a mixed blessing,” he said in the interview. “And greater knowledge is required to fly a highly automated aircraft.”
Mr. Langewiesche said he was mystified by Mr. Sullenberger’s reaction to “Fly by Wire.” “There have been some characterizations of the book that are wrong,” he said, adding that he was neither a proponent nor opponent of fly by wire, but that it was important to examine its role in what happened to Flight 1549. “I don’t think its role is critical, but it was functioning, it’s part of the story.”
The National Transportation Safety Board has not issued a final report on the event, but when it does, it is likely to show that there were “flaws in this design,” said Dan Sicchio, a US Airways pilot who represented the pilots’ union in the investigation. “There are things that will come out that will show problems with the control system in this airplane. There were things that helped Sully and things that hurt him.”