Shamelessly Lifted From Fark.com

Sorry for another off-topic, non-shaving-related post. I try to keep these to a minimum (I guess I need to make a secondary blog for non-shaving stuff) but I've been following the US Air flight 1549 story, particularly about the pilot, and saw this posting on Fark.com, that I thought was worth sharing:

Large airliners are quite good gliders. Very clean, for obvious reasons, which is the chief factor. Planes in general do just fine without the engines running. You are going to land soon, but you do get some input as to where.

Sully did a superb job. It's hard to think of a worse place to lose all your engines. Mountainous terrain a night is bad, but all you will kill on the ground is a moose. NYC? There is no place to go that isn't going to take out a whole bunch of people.

But to put this in perspective, picture the worst test you took in college. Make it 10 multiple choice questions. Now put the teacher in front of you with a shotgun pointed at your head, who says "you have 180 seconds to get all 10 questions right, and if you get any wrong, any of them, I *will* blow your head clean off, right then. now ... go."

Flying pilot is flying. Non flying pilot is grabbing checklists, scanning instruments, shutting off beeps and voices etc. Passengers are starting to scream. No real idea what happened (they almost certainly did not see the birds) and you can't see the engines from the cockpit. Speed is bleeding off rapidly. Lower the nose. You have to figure out what of maybe 5 or 6 different scenarios that could have made the symptoms you are seeing (compressor stall? some sort of fuel failure? bad pumps, contaminated fuel? funky french computer programming? bird strike? maybe a real honest to god shoe bomber?).

While you are flying and your buddy is pushing buttons, reading checklists and scanning gauges, your choices are changing. The right answer, which you don't know yet, is changing because your position and altitude are changing. Turn towards westchester? Stewart? Teterboro? The river? Picture taking that multiple choice test in which you have 180 seconds to get 10 questions right, but the questions themselves change every 5 seconds. Can we even do an air restart at this altitude and airspeed?

Plus, as your non-flying checklist reading compatriot is struggling, you have to start concluding you aren't getting the engines restarted. Which now is a whole different mindset. Look for something, anything to land on that isn't a huge building or a bridge. Tell your non-flying buddy to start thinking water landing - a whole different set of checklists. Tell the cabin crew. start
shutting stuff off. Oh yeah, has anyone told the controller anything yet? Watch the airspeed, no stalls here. Squawk 7700? Maybe say I love you to your wife and kids, who will at least get to hear you in the voice recorder?

Buddy, whats best glide for this weight, look it up right now. Whats the suggested configuration for a water landing, flaps what 10?, 0 what? What does the wind look like near the surface of the river, we don't want to hit in a crab, or you get that whole flipping over breaking up thing. Sh*t there's a bridge. Stretch the glide just a tad. Christ there's a lot of sh*t in NYC. Please, mr. ferry boat captain, look up.

Keep it stone cold level. Actually use those rudder pedals for once. Hey, it was good working with you.

Bang.

Jesus H. Christ we are still alive.

***

Sully is a hero not because of today, but because Sully's been a hero for 30 years, but no one knew or cared. Not his employer, not his union, and sadly, by and large, not his customers. But he said fark, I don't care if everyone around me doesn't care - I care. And even if I get to retirement and it never made a difference, I was still ready to be a hero every gd day, through
every strike, every bankruptcy, every merger, every stupid corporate policy change, every divorce, every dumbass thing the FAA has done, oil prices, every day. For 30 years.
There are only a few civilian jobs left where everything can go to death defying shiat in seconds. Pilot, er doc, big city cop, big city fireman. The rest, it's all theoretical. The rest, your downside is a bad review. Maybe you have to interview. Not, hey you screwed up the database server, so now we are going to pour jet fuel all over you and set you on fire.

Good job, buddy.