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This probably helped as well -
Sullenberger enrolled at the United States Air Force Academy in 1969. He was selected as one of around a dozen other freshmen for a cadet glider program, and by the end of that year, he was an instructor pilot. In the year of his graduation, 1973, he received the Outstanding Cadet in Airmanship award, as the class "top flyer". Following graduation with a Bachelor of Science and his commissioning as an officer, the Air Force immediately sent Sullenberger to Purdue University.
Sullenberger served as a fighter pilot for the United States Air Force, piloting McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs from 1975 to 1980. He advanced to become a flight leader and a training officer, and attained the rank of captain, with experience in Europe, the Pacific, and at Nellis Air Force Base, as well as operating as Blue Force Mission Commander in Red Flag Exercises. While in the Air Force, he was a member of an aircraft accident investigation board.
Sullenberger was employed by US Airways or its predecessor airlines from 1980 until 2010. (Pacific Southwest Airlines was acquired by US Air, later US Airways, in 1988.) In total, he has more than 40 years and 20,000 hours of flying experience. In 2007 he became the founder and CEO of Safety Reliability Methods, Inc. (SRM), a management, safety, performance, and reliability consulting firm. SRM provides strategic and tactical guidance to enhance organizational safety, performance, and reliability. He has also been involved in a number of accident investigations conducted by the USAF and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), such as Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 and USAir Flight 1493. He served as an instructor, Air Line Pilots Association Local Air Safety Chairman, accident investigator, and national technical committee member. His safety work for ALPA led to the development of a Federal Aviation Administration Advisory Circular. He was instrumental in developing and implementing the Crew Resource Management course that is used by US Airways, and he has taught the course to hundreds of airline crew members.
Working with NASA scientists, he co-authored a paper on error-inducing contexts in aviation. He was an air accident investigator for a NTSB inquiry into a major accident at Los Angeles International Airport, which "led to improved airline procedures and training for emergency evacuations of aircraft". Sullenberger has also been studying the psychology behind keeping an airline crew functioning during a crisis. He holds an Airline Transport Pilot Certificate for single and multi-engine airplanes, and a Commercial Pilot Certificate rating in gliders, as well as a flight instructor certificate for airplanes (single, multi-engine, and instrument), and gliders.
Sullenberger was active with his union, serving as chairman of a safety committee within the Air Line Pilots Association.
He was a featured speaker for two panels, one on aviation and one on patient safety in medicine, at the High Reliability Organizations (HRO) 2007 International Conference in Deauville, France, from May 29 to 31, 2007.