Friday, January 16, 2009

How Cool is this Guy?

Let me just add my voice to the chorus. Chelsey Sullenberger is the coolest guy ever.

He didn’t just save all of the people on U.S. Airways flight 1549. He saved the people on the ground that had no idea they were in harm’s way. And no one is digging fuselage out of his living room right now.

But let me add this:

When I was a kid, I listened to all of the airline procedures. Learned them backward and forward. But I believed in my heart that if a plane went down, that was it. A hard landing was one thing. Your engine exploding three minutes into flight? Forget about it.

What Captain Sullenberger did in thinking quickly and putting that plane down in the river showed me – a frequent enough flyer – that not every incident is a tragedy if the guy at the helm knows what he is doing.

And. The passengers and crew on board seemed to perform a very orderly emergency exit. Rather gives me hope for humanity.

This article talks about how Captain Sullenberger has been a serious student of Crisis Management. It is not all about madmen with guns and bombs. He also works as a consultant, applying safety concepts from the airlines to other businesses.

The airline industry has gotten a lot of bad press over the last few years. But today, Captain Sullenberger is a credit to his profession. God Bless.

P.S. It seems he already has a Facebook Fan Club

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