Oh, FFS. Yeah, we know, you can fly and land with a single engine, that's what ETOPS is more or less, noone questioned that. And yes, a two engine turboprop might have more problems with a single engine, but no idea how relevant that is.
But please. She had a situation at her hands where 140 people are injured, perhaps dying and she talks to the tower with a stony calm. Even the famous "Houston Center voice" of the Tower Controller was shaken a bit when he asked back. That's what made everyone astonished.
That's just embellishment. 140 people were not injured or dying, she was told what the situation was. A Navy fighter pilot with over two decades of commercial flying is not going to get rattled by one engine out on a jetliner. It's not like the landing gear was broken.
> A Navy fighter pilot with over two decades of commercial flying is not going to get rattled by one engine out on a jetliner.
Spot on. Some seem to be going out of their way to embellish the stakes as if it's necessary to credit the pilot with being highly skilled. She already is, no question!
She doesn't need the exaggeration, it seems patronizing..the situation is what it is, no more no less.
This is horseshit. She had an engine explode and shrapnel ripped apart the fuselage, it’s not remotely a “one engine out simulation”. Was the wing damaged? How badly was the fuselage damaged? Was the plane actually on fire as the indicators showed? She was accounting for a large number of unknowns that the armchair crowd here is not even considering. She was also told that someone was ejected from the plane. Do these not have an impact on the pilot’s mental state? She retired from flying fighter jets only to be shot down by her own poorly maintained engine while carrying 150 other people? This is looking at a good outcome and deciding that it looked easy.
Aye. I'm not going to say she did the impossible, threaded the eye of the needle or anything like that. But there was plenty of opportunity or circumstance for things to horribly wrong. But she's got a ton of experience and in the moment of truth she didn't choke and everyone who could be saved was saved. That ought to be enough for anyone.
The status of 140 people in the back has zero bearing on the situation in the cockpit.
The situation is that one engine has gone offline and there has been a sudden depressurization event.
The airline industry realized long ago that people suck under pressure so they write checklists and explicit sets of procedures for dealing with basically everything.
Your job as the pilot is to execute that checklist, as best you can and not be a cowboy.
Even getting the plane ready for takeoff is a checklist you must complete and file before every takeoff.
Even the Miracle on the Hudson was a pilot completely aware of what could and should be done even though the exact scenario had never been practiced. Experienced pilots have been through enormous training sessions these days and even tossing them something no one has ever faced is still based on them understanding the limitations and potentials of a plane in distress. It doesn't always come out perfectly (planes do still crash based on pilot error) but I'd trust a well trained experience airline pilot without question in life or death in an airplane.
Losing all thrust shortly after takeoff is a particularly nasty emergency. Pilots of single-engine airplanes talk about the impossible turn for a reason. It’s really closer to a 270° turn than a 180° turn and requires aggressive maneuvering at low altitude to avoid a stall-spin accident, which has claimed many lives. Unless the pilot is particularly proficient at the maneuver, common advice is to plan on landing straight ahead until reaching 1,000 feet AGL.
Having multiple engines makes it not twice as safe but thousands of times safer, at least with respect to losing all thrust. (Multi-engine aircraft have other ways to kill you.) A multi-engine turbine aircraft — turbine engines being far more reliable than pistons — is so unlikely to lose all thrust, i.e., in all engines simultaneously, that they didn’t bother training for it. This worst-case scenario happened anyway.
The Southwest incident took place in the flight levels. Altitude is insurance and gives lots of time to consider options. The airplane still had thrust from one engine so may have been capable of (slow) climbs and certainly of level flight. The big unknown in the moment was whether the airframe would hold together, so they still wanted to get on the ground as soon as possible.
Given the choice of emergencies, one would take the Southwest circumstances easily. Both pilots did great work managing terrible situations that could have ended up much worse. Loss of all lives on board was in the realm of possibility for both.
I don't know how accurate the movie was, but it is my understanding that the NTSB initially questioned whether the pilot made the right choice to land in the Hudson rather than turn back to the airport.
That is a natural question for them to raise, even derelict if they didn't raise it. Once it was raised and investigated, I think it was conclusive that the Hudson was a very reasonable (and probably the) best choice.
Exactly, the pilots had to evaluate the situation and make a decision, I don't think they had a checklist that told them what to do. They made the right decision- and executed beautifully.
Source? Double engine failures are incredibly rare, and I've not been able to find anything that indicates Sullenberberger was involved in any prior to 1549. In simulation, probably.
In the recording of the tower communications, she specifically mentions the person that was sitting next to the broken window, it doesn't sound at all like she believes that most of the passengers are (seriously) injured.
I think she might have also never entered the cabin, so therefore got the information secondhand. This probably helps with calmness and focus. "Crew Resource Management"?
But please. She had a situation at her hands where 140 people are injured, perhaps dying and she talks to the tower with a stony calm. Even the famous "Houston Center voice" of the Tower Controller was shaken a bit when he asked back. That's what made everyone astonished.