Sully on ‘60 Minutes’
Travel Blog • Rob Verger • 02.09.09 | 11:07 AM ET
I loved watching Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and the rest of the crew interviewed on 60 Minutes last night. There’s been so much press about U.S. Airways Flight 1549, but it was still powerful to hear all of them speak about what the entire event was like from their perspectives. (You can hear the audio transcripts of the plane-to-ground communication during the emergency here.)
A few moments from the interview that stuck with me: Sully said that hitting the flock of birds sounded like “loud thumps—it felt like the airplane being pelted by heavy rain or hail. It sounded like the worst thunderstorm I’d ever heard growing up in Texas.” He said he “felt, heard and smelled the evidence of them going into the engines.”
One of the most moving quotes came when he described how he heard, through the cockpit door, the cabin crew chanting instructions to brace for impact. “I felt very comforted by that,” he said.
And poor Doreen Welsh, the flight attendant in the very back of the plane who described the feeling of having water up to her neck and feeling like she was going to die. She said, “my emotions had gone through, within seconds, accepting death and seeing life. It was unbelievable.” She suffered a deep cut in her leg and described the landing from her perspective in the rear as “violent, horrible.”
Another interesting detail is that none of the three members of the cabin crew knew they had landed in the water—one even said she saw the water outside and thought for a moment that it could be water near a runway.
To end on a much, much lighter note—and just to make sure that my coverage of this incident is fair and balanced—here, after the jump, is how Larry the Goose remembers things: (Via The Middle Seat Terminal)
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Rob Verger is a frequent contributor to World Hum and the site's former air travel blogger. His articles and photographs have appeared in the Boston Globe and other publications, and he's a former undergraduate writing instructor at Columbia University. If you like, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or follow him on Twitter.
previously.bitten 02.09.09 | 12:37 PM ET
great update. Being from outside the states, I’m really starting to become upset with Hulu. All the videos I’m missing out on.
Julia Ross 02.09.09 | 1:36 PM ET
Rob- hilarious video clip. I caught the second segment on 60 Minutes last night and was amazed by Sullenberger’s unflappability.
andrew mahlstedt 02.09.09 | 2:44 PM ET
As “fair and balanced” as Fox News. I find it interesting how quickly we’ve turned this guy into a real American hero. He is becoming everything we need as a country right now. Is that plane crashing the metaphor for our economy, and he landed it nice and softly into the water? While the plane itself may be useless, it can be salvaged, and the people are ok…the old economy needs some serious work to be salvaged, but the people will be ok. That’s what we want to believe…
Jenna Schnuer 02.09.09 | 2:49 PM ET
Nice piece Rob. This story has been such a bright spot of things going right in the midst of news that has been…oh, no need to recap all that. No matter how much I hear or read about it, I get a little teary every time.
As for that SNL clip…“cluster flock” cracked me up. I want to use it in at least one sentence a day for the rest of my life. I don’t know how the two of them got through the skit without losing it.