Highest Duty

by Chesley B. Sullenberger

  Captain Haynes told me he has continually seen the good in people, and they have helped him make peace with what he was able to do that day in 1989—and what he couldn’t do. Understandably, he has wondered what would have happened if his crew could have kept the wings level and landed flat. But even had they been able to do that, the plane might have hit the runway and exploded.

  When we talked a few weeks after Flight 1549, Captain Haynes told me to be prepared for some anxious thoughts. “I’m sure you’ll feel there’s something more you could have done,” he said. “Everybody second-guesses themselves. We did, too, for a while. And then we decided there was nothing else we could have done.” He had read a great deal about my flight, and told me he agreed with the decisions Jeff and I made in the cockpit. This meant a lot to me.

  He also said that after Flight 1549, a few passengers from his flight got in touch with him, just to touch base and commiserate. Airline accidents are always reminders of past airline accidents. “It brought back memories for all of us,” Captain Haynes told me.

  He said he felt a kinship with me, given the traumas associated with both of our flights, and the ways in which we were tested. We talked of how we’re members of a select group now. And then he gave me advice: “Wait until you’re ready, and then go back to work. You’re a pilot. You should be flying.”

  IN CRM training, we also taught the details about United Airlines Flight 811, bound from Honolulu to Auckland, New Zealand, on February 24, 1989. It was a Boeing 747–122 with 337 passengers and a crew of eighteen.

  At about 2:08 A.M., sixteen minutes after taking off from Honolulu, the forward cargo door blew out. The floor in the passenger cabin, above the door, caved in because of the change in pressure, and five rows of seats with nine passengers were sucked out of the jet and fell into the Pacific below. A huge hole was left in the cabin, and two of the engines were in flames, severely damaged by debris ejected from the plane during the incident.

  The pilots, who had been climbing to just over twenty-two thousand feet, decided to make a 180-degree turn. Their hope was to make it back to Honolulu, seventy-two miles behind them. It would be a terrifying ride for passengers, as debris and baggage from damaged overhead bins swirled through the cabin. Some said it felt like a tornado.

  Captain Dave Cronin, First Officer Al Slader, and Second Officer Randal Thomas knew that this emergency involved much more than just a loss of cabin pressurization. It also involved engine failures. With half their engines out, they had difficulty maintaining altitude that would be needed to make it back to Honolulu.

  Slader used the fuel control switches to shut off the two engines, but opted not to pull the engine fire shutoff handles, which were designed to prevent further fires. He was procedurally required to pull those handles when engines are severely damaged, but he realized if he did so, two hydraulic pumps would be lost, which would affect the crew’s ability to maintain control of the aircraft. So he did not pull them.

  The pilots dumped fuel to make the plane lighter. The flight attendants had passengers put on life jackets and then told them to “Brace!” After landing, fire trucks put out the flames. Though 9 people had died in the wake of the cargo door explosion, 346 people survived the flight.

  An investigation determined that the cause was a faulty switch or wiring in the cargo door control system, and problems with the design of the cargo door.

  The crew acted heroically because they knew, from their deep knowledge of the systems on that plane, that they would have to improvise and modify procedures in order to deal with this unexpected emergency. They acted bravely in getting the plane safely to the ground.

  As I studied that accident, I filed away the fact that I might one day have to rely on my systems knowledge, not only on a checklist. Not every situation can be foreseen or anticipated. There isn’t a checklist for everything.

  I’VE COME across a number of people over the years who think that modern airplanes, with all their technology and automation, can almost fly themselves.

  That’s simply not true. Automation can lower the workload in some cases. But in other situations, using automation when it is not appropriate can increase one’s workload. A pilot has to know how to use a level of automation that is appropriate.

  I have long been an admirer of Earl Wiener, Ph.D., a former Air Force pilot who is now retired from the University of Miami’s department of management science. He is renowned for his work in helping us understand aviation safety.

  He once told me about an appearance he made at a forum in which another speaker’s topic was “the role of the pilot in the automated cockpit.” When it was Dr. Wiener’s turn to speak, he noted, wryly but rightly, that the session should have been called “the role of automation in the piloted cockpit.”

  Whether you’re flying by hand or using technology to help, you’re ultimately flying the airplane with your mind by developing and maintaining an accurate real-time mental model of your reality—the airplane, the environment, and the situation. The question is: How many different levels of technology do you want to place between your brain and the control surfaces? The plane is never going somewhere on its own without you. It’s always going where you tell it to go. A computer can only do what it is told to do. The choice is: Do I tell it to do something by pushing on the control stick with my hand, or do I tell it to do something by using some intervening technology?

  The Airbus A320, the aircraft we were flying as Flight 1549, has a fly-by-wire system, which in essence means the flight controls are moved by sending electrical impulses, rather than having a direct mechanical link between the control stick in the cockpit and the control surfaces on the wings and tail. The fly-by-wire system keeps you from exceeding predetermined values, such as the degree of pitch (how low or high the plane’s nose can be versus the horizon), the bank angle (how steep a turn you can make), and how fast or slow you can go.

  Dr. Wiener worried, and I agree, that the paradox of automation is that it often lowers a pilot’s workload when that load is already low. And it sometimes increases the workload in the cockpit when it is already high.

  Take, for instance, a last-minute runway change. In the old days, you could easily tune your radio navigation receiver to the frequency for the approach to the different runway. Now it might take ten or twelve presses of buttons on the computer to arrange for a runway change.

  For those who believe technology is the answer to everything, Dr. Wiener would offer data to prove that isn’t the case. He said that automated airplanes with the highest technologies do not eliminate errors. They change the nature of the errors that are made. For example, in terms of navigational errors, automation enables pilots to make huge navigation errors very precisely. Consider American Airlines Flight 965, a Boeing 757 flying from Miami to Cali, Colombia, on December 20, 1995. Because two different waypoints (defined points along a flight path) were given the same name and the flight management computer displayed the nearer one as the second choice of the two, the pilots mistakenly selected the more distant one, putting the plane on a collision course with a mountain. Just 4 of the 163 people on the plane survived.

  Dr. Wiener is not antitechnology, and neither am I. But technology is no substitute for experience, skill, and judgment.

  ONE THING that has always helped make the airline industry strong and safe is the concept that pilots call “captain’s authority.” What that means is we have a measure of autonomy—the ability to make an independent, professional judgment within the framework of professional standards.

  The problem today is that pilots are viewed differently. Over the years, we’ve lost a good deal of respect from our management, our fellow employees, the general public. The whole concept of being a pilot has been diminished, and I worry that safety can be compromised as a result. People used to say that airline pilots were one step below astronauts. Now the joke is: We’re one step above bus drivers, but bus drivers have better pensions.

  Airline managers seem to s
econd-guess us more often now. There are more challenges. Thirty years ago, it would be unheard of for a mechanic or ramp worker to vociferously disagree with a captain. Now it happens.

  I know that some captains don’t represent the best of us. There may be circumstances and times when it is appropriate to challenge a captain. But sometimes we are questioned because others in the airline system want the operation to go more smoothly or be more timely or less costly.

  There was a scene in the 2002 movie Catch Me If You Can that made me think. Set in the 1960s, and based on a true story, the film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a con man who at one point impersonates a Pan Am pilot. In this particular scene, DiCaprio’s character is watching a handsome captain in full uniform walking into a hotel accompanied by several beautiful young Pan Am stewardesses. The front desk manager comes out from behind the counter to greet them, welcoming the captain and his crew back to the hotel. It’s just a passing moment in the movie, but it perfectly encapsulates the high level of respect given to airline crews then. I almost had tears in my eyes watching that reminder of what the Golden Age of Aviation was like—and how much flight crews have lost since then.

  A few years ago, in Flying magazine, I read a column written by an airline captain who was nearing retirement. He was remembering his earliest days as a pilot, and comparing those days with today, when all airline employees, including pilots, are judged on their ability to follow rules. “We were hired for our judgment,” he wrote. “Now we are being evaluated on our compliance.”

  In many ways, it’s good that all airlines are more standardized today. There are appropriate procedures and we are bound to follow them. These days there are virtually no cowboys in the skies, ignoring items on their checklists. At the same time, however, I am concerned that compliance alone is not sufficient. Judgment—like Al Slader’s decision—is paramount.

  The way the best pilots see it: A captain’s highest duty and obligation is always to safety. As we say it: “We have the power of the parking brake.” The plane will not move until we feel we can operate the aircraft safely.

  With authority comes great responsibility. A captain needs leadership skills to take the individuals on his crew and make them feel and perform like a team. It’s a heavy professional burden on the captain to know he may be called upon to tap into the depths of his experience, the breadth of his knowledge, and his ability to think quickly, weighing everything he knows while accounting for what he cannot know.

  I long have had great respect for pilots such as Al Haynes, Al Slader, and many others. And I believe that my knowledge and understanding of their actions was of great help to me on Flight 1549 as I made decisions in those tense moments over New York City.

  12. THE VIEW FROM ABOVE

  NO TWO AIRPORTS are exactly alike. They’re almost like fingerprints in that way. Each one has a different geometry, runway layout, and arrangement of taxiways and terminal buildings. Each one differs in its direction and distance from the city center, and proximity to other landmarks.

  I’ve never counted how many different runways I’ve landed on. I couldn’t tell you the exact number of cities I’ve seen from the air. But I try to pay attention to the specific details of a place, and to hold on to a mental picture of the view. It could be helpful the next time I return, even if it’s years later.

  When pilots fly regular routes to a certain city, we become very familiar with what the area’s landmarks look like from the air. From as high as twenty-five or thirty thousand feet, we can identify the tallest buildings, the local stadiums, the nearest large bodies of water, the major highways. We know the configurations of the runways, the seasonal weather conditions, and, once on the ground, the best place to get a reasonably healthy lunch in the terminal.

  Given the US Airways hub system, I’ve done a lot of flying into Charlotte, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, so takeoffs and landings in those cities are a pilot’s equivalent of driving your car out of your driveway and through your neighborhood.

  On so many flights, I find myself thinking the same thoughts: about how beautiful Earth is—both the natural and the manmade beauty—and how lucky we are to call it our home.

  There are many parts of the country I enjoy flying over or into. Approaching St. Louis on a clear day, you can see the 630-foot-tall Gateway Arch from ten miles away and 30,000 feet up. If the sun is at the right angle, you’ll find sunlight glistening off the edge of the arch.

  Flying into Las Vegas, in the clear desert air, you can see the Strip from a good distance even in the daytime. At night, it’s a line of some of the brightest lights on the continent, beckoning from eighty miles away.

  Seattle is a gorgeous city to fly into. When I was a pilot at PSA, I would sometimes fly up to Seattle from Los Angeles, and I knew by memory the volcanoes in the Cascade Range heading north—Mount McLoughlin, Mount Bachelor, the Three Sisters, Mount Washington, Mount Jefferson, Mount Hood, Mount Adams, Mount Rainier. Each mountain would loom into view, one after the other.

  I’ve flown over a lot of places in America—Montana, Idaho, the Dakotas—where you travel great distances without much evidence of human habitation. It’s a lonely kind of beauty, but it can tug at you. I also like flying on the East Coast, where the population density is striking. There’s a constant stream of lights between Washington, D.C., and Boston. From the air, it has almost become one continuous megalopolis.

  Flying down to Ft. Lauderdale, I like passing over Cape Canaveral and seeing its three-mile-long runway. What a thrill it would be to land the shuttle there. Florida trips also have reminded me of how easily nature can tear apart hundreds of miles of human development. For years after a spate of hurricanes in 2004 and 2005, thousands of homes in South Florida had blue tarps covering their roofs. It was sobering to fly above that checkerboard carpet of blue squares, to see the destructive powers of wind and rain.

  In the early 1990s, when I was lower on the seniority list, I had to pilot a lot of red-eye flights. On so many of those red-eyes, I got to see the northern lights again and again. Especially in the wintertime, there were nights when for the whole trip, west to east, the lights would fill the entire northern horizon. To me, these lights—formed by charged particles colliding in the earth’s magnetosphere—looked like curtains billowing gently in the wind, with their folds swaying in and out. Sometimes, the lights were a deep magenta or cherry red. Other times, as the lights were cycling, they were lime green. Rather than looking like a curtain, these green lights sometimes looked like an old TV with the vertical hold not adjusted properly and the lines on the TV rolling from bottom to top. I felt privileged to be in a place, night after night, where I could see such scenes.

  A few years ago, my schedule included regular trips to Bermuda, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and Antigua, which were a lot more fun than landing in Charlotte for the 141st time. I loved approaching the islands during daylight. We’d come in over shallow turquoise water, with the white, sandy beaches and lush green mountains ahead of us.

  I USED to fly from Albany, New York, to LaGuardia, and we’d pass over West Point, a trip that would often jog memories for me. One winter, when I was a cadet at the Air Force Academy, I was sent to West Point for a week as part of an exchange program. On that visit, everything there felt gray to me: the stone walls of the old buildings, the winter sky, the cadets’ uniforms. I ate in the cavernous cadet dining hall, where I was told that General Douglas MacArthur made his last visit to West Point. He had come back to his beloved alma mater in 1962 to give his famous “Duty, Honor, Country” speech. Flying over West Point on winter days decades later, I’d find myself thinking about that speech and wondering what the current cadets were doing at that particular moment.

  My schedule takes me into and out of LaGuardia about fifteen times a year, and in my career, I’ve flown there hundreds of times. So I know the general landscape and landmarks of the area very well.

  In the New York corridor, when the weather is good, controllers
often tell us to fly toward a specific landmark on the ground. This use of “reporting points”—especially important when pilots are flying visually in addition to using instruments—is less common in some other areas of the country, where the landmarks aren’t as large or well-known.

  “Direct to the statue. Follow the river,” controllers will tell us, which means fly toward the Statue of Liberty and then follow the Hudson. Or they’ll point us to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, at the mouth of upper New York Bay. “Direct to the Narrows.”

  If time permits, I’ll allow myself to take a moment to appreciate the physical beauty of the New York landscape. Below me are millions of people in hundreds of thousands of structures. It’s pretty dramatic.

  On a cloudless day with good visibility, when I can clearly see “The Lady”—pilots’ shorthand for the Statue of Liberty—I can often make out the flash of flame in her torch. Passing over the statue, I’m reminded of how I used to love reading an illustrated children’s book to Kate and Kelly when they were young. The book was about the building of the statue, how the French people gave it to the United States as a gift, and about “The New Colossus,” the Emma Lazarus poem engraved on a bronze plaque at the base. I enjoyed that children’s book even more than the girls did, partly because I’ve always found that poem by Emma Lazarus to be so moving and evocative. I can recite much of it from memory: “…and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand glows worldwide welcome; Her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor…I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

  When the girls were little and I was on a trip, I’d mail them postcards so they could get a sense of where I was. Sometimes, I’d also send postcards to their teachers to share with the class. I’d offer a few lines with my own observations about, say, the Liberty Bell in Philly or the famous statues of ducklings in Boston Public Garden. When I sent the girls postcards of the Statue of Liberty, I described the thrill I felt flying over it, and how I had thought of them and our shared bedtime book.