Flight 1549 praise is being over done.

I don't know who is in charge of declaring who is and who is not a hero. But I would think it might be appropriate to ask the folks who survived flight 1549 what they thought of thier captain? Methinks the man who saved their lives is a hero.

Perhaps the attention he seeks is for himself. He has received more attention on this thread than he has his entire tenure at A2K.

Wing level just about stall speed and so on is the same kind of flight configuration you would use as a matter of course on a short field landing and should be well within the capibility of any very high hour pilot. Once more setting up for as slow a speed landing as possible does not require great skill sets.

Hell go to any general aviation airport and you will see low hours pilots floating fifty feet about the runway with full flaps for a thousand feets or more and I always am waiting for a gust of wind to land them very hard indeed.

The no engine and therfore no second chance is a stressor that I had known myself however was not one of the backgound facts concerning the gentleman was that he was a glider pilot?

I just spoke with a friend of mine who is himself a pilot. He flies a private plane over the Grand Canyon among other places. He said what Sully did was "awesome" and he doubted he could do the same thing under the same circumstances. No worries Bill, your name never came up.

Nickfun in what way and in what manner did your friend think that the ditching was awesome?

The outcome was awesome but doing a nice control slow landing in the Hudson was in what way awesome flying?

What skill sets did this command pilot show that your friend would not be able to match?

Let hear some details from your friend.

Now flying a plane without any controls at all but the engines power setting now that is awesome and as far as I know no one had match it even in a similator to date.

Placing a plane down on a canal bank after a hail storm had knock the engines off line and doing it well enough that not only was there a 100 percent survival rate but the plane was place back in service now that is awesome.

Somehow I think your friend had a very low level of what he will consider awesome.

Nickfun in fact why do you not forward my last posting to your friend and maybe he would be nice enough to tell us all how a nice slow ditching in the Hudison happen to raise to the level of awesome flying.

Good skillful flying yes awesome flying that most high hours pilots could not match hell no.

We do need our heroes no matter what the logic of the situation call for it would seem.

I guess, if you consider there are no bridges on the Hudson and no boats then it was pretty easy, wasn't it?

Nothing to see here folks. Anyone could have landed that plane. Hell, Bill could do it in his sleep and then brag about it for the rest of his life.

Oh now our hero was somehow able to dodge around boats traffic and a few bridges and that is why he is a hero?

The river is full of boat traffic that is one of the reason that no one die but from the video I had seen there was no boats near his impact point and if there had been I do not think he could had dome must about it one way or another.

Kind of like landing on a highway you hope greatly that the cars get out of your way.

We do look for any silly reason at all to elevate a skillful ditching that almost any high hour pilot could had done into something more do we not!

Any high hour pilot could have done?

And how many high hour pilots have told you they could do it, no problem?

I am guessing NONE. But if you want to give us names of those high hour pilots that think it was easy, feel free.

Air traffic controllers at LaGuardia saw the plane clear the George Washington Bridge by less than 900 feet before gliding into the water about 3:31 p.m., an aviation source told CNN.

And how many high hours pilots had told you that for some strange reason that they could not had done it?

I would love to hear why they would feel they could not had done so like in the case of Nickfun friend.

A ditching just require a slow landing approach the kind that people used on short runnaways for example every day and a great deal of luck.

Why do you need this man to be more then he happen to be? Would you feel the same emotional need if the command pilot had been a forty year old woman?

Second question if he had been over the ocean instead and with the same skill place the plane down and the ocean waves cause the plane to break up and along with the break up help was not able to get to the location rapidly enough to keep some of the landing survivors from freezing.

Now we have a pilot that due to no fault of his that only have a survivial rate of 20 percents.

Would you still be so emotional set to declare him a hero?

Same man same skill in landing not the same results.

It is, indeed, a puzzle to me why Bill is so adamant that this pilot not receive the recognition that he is getting and that he deserves.

Things must be rather dull in Bill's world to make this such a big concern that is swallowing him up. Bill finally gets his fifteen minutes.

I think the answer is fairly clear. He is a Walter Middy type who likes to imagine he could do these things at such a moment. Novels have been written about this disorder - Conrad's "Lord Jim" is an example. Unfortunately things don't often work out as we (and such characters in particular) imagine them.

I'll grant you that a ditching (and I have done one) isn't much different from an ordinary landing (except for the added ground effect with the wheels up), and that experience as a sailplane pilot is a useful aid. However, putting it all together in a situation like that one, where the stresses and consequences are very high, is not simply the result of the mastery of manual skills in a simulator.

BillRM - truly that argument is the most absurd you've made so far on this thread. I'm a woman with over 2,000 hours as PIC on hydroplanes and I'm telling you I stand in awe of that captain's accomplishment, in such a short time, in an airplane never designed for ditching, with so many passengers, crew, and people and structures underneath to worry about.

Can you find one (M/F) trained pilot - that's ONE, not two - who will agree with you on this cranky attitude you've adopted? Give me his/her name, please, I'd like to talk to this person. Separately, at least some common misconceptions like those of Ralph Nader have been cleared up in this incident:

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Water-landing

This may be a digression, but I happened to be in DC the day a jet took off from Washington National (now Ronald Reagan) with 3 inches of ice on the wings, never made it to altitude, and crashed into the 14th Street bridge. To this day I remember - and am haunted by - the last 2 sentences on the FAA transcript of the cockpit conversation:

Pilot in command: "We're going down".
Co-pilot: "I know it".

Yes, the Potomac was frozen at the edges but water was flowing freely in the middle - they might have tried to ditch but couldn't. They died in the crash, as did many of their passengers, and even some rescuers (from hypothermia). No blame attaches to these 2 pilots. It ain't easy, BillRM

I seem to recall some discussion of there never being an American water-landing ditch which did not result in a single death... that alone should tell ya something about this guy's skill.

I suppose the truth is that many pilots COULD have done it. But the fact is that only one DID do it. Sometimes people become heroes just by being in the right place at the right time, not because they were overly brave or throwing themselves into the line of fire.

Cycloptichorn

No, I'm not reaching my boy you are - you are reaching for reasons he isn't a hero.

One doesn't have to put one's life at risk to be considered a hero in any case - the true definition of hero is one who is admired for his achievements and noble qualities.

Well when Bill referred to risking one's life as being a heroic, I pointed out how the man did just that and he still denies it.

In the interviews - almost (if not all) did just that said he was their hero - along with family members of those who survived.

And in one letter, some one wrote in about how he is her hero and everyone else's as he saved her grandfather and countless others that lived in highrises nearby.

You done a ditching how about some detials as I for one would be interested and I am sure others would be also.

What type plane and was it an ocean ditching?