l didn`t know he had any gliding experience, l`m afraid.
What is it that you're afraid of? Yes, he had gliding experience.
May l respectfully suggest that you have hard facts concerning that man, and not contentious waffle, since he did actually pull off a blinder.
His time, if he did, selling Tony`s lce Cream from a van would not matter a jot.
I don't know what a "blinder" is, but it's also not what Sully said:
A&S Interview: Sully?s Tale | Flight Today | Air & Space Magazine
The way I describe this whole experience—and I haven’t had time to reflect on it sufficiently—is that everything I had done in my career had in some way been a preparation for that moment. There were probably some things that were more important than others or that applied more directly. But I felt like everything I’d done in some way contributed to the outcome—of course along with [the actions of] my first officer and the flight attendant crew, the cooperative behavior of the passengers during the evacuation, and the prompt and efficient response of the first responders in New York.
Sully made a power-off, off-field forced landing. He's not the first to ditch, he's not the first to glide, and he's not the first to do either one successfully. He did an excellent job, as did his FO. He should be expected to do nothing less, no should any one of us.
I just read Sully's book and I thought I read that he said his previous gliding experiences didn't really help becuase they were so different, and that in fact it was his thousands of hours of honing his energy management on jets that helped.
Reading the above referenced interview, you may be correct: Sully is asked about his gliding background, and he states the following:
I get asked that question about my gliding experience a lot, but that was so long ago, and those [gliders] are so different from a modern jet airliner, I think the transfer [of experience] was not large. There are more recent experiences I’ve had that played a greater role.
One of the big differences in flying heavy jets versus flying lighter, smaller aircraft is energy management—always knowing at any part of the flight what the most desirable flight path is, then trying to attain that in an elegant way with the minimum thrust, so that you never are too high or too low or too fast or too slow. I’ve always paid attention to that, and I think that more than anything else helped me.