given one. US Airways would spend some time constructing one from the electronic records of the flight.
Police were everywhere, and a high-ranking police officer told me that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly wanted me to go see them at another location. I had to decline. “I have responsibilities here,” I said. And so Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly ended up coming to the ferry terminal to ask me a few questions. I was too concerned about the passenger issues to have a real conversation with them. I gave them a short update and that was it. “I made sure everyone was off the airplane,” I told them. “We’re trying to find out if they’re all accounted for.”
Much discussion took place about where the crew and I should go next. Eventually we were taken to the hospital to be evaluated and have our vital signs checked. All the while I kept asking and asking, “What’s the total?”
After we were examined in the emergency room and were told we were all OK, we were left just standing around, waiting for confirmation, waiting for news, waiting to find out where we would go next. There weren’t enough chairs for all of us in the examination room, but I didn’t feel like sitting anyway. It was stressful, just waiting, not knowing the outcome, standing there in my wet uniform and my wet socks. I wouldn’t have a chance to get into anything dry until midnight.
In the hour or two that followed, three more doctors came in. They didn’t really have any medical reason for stopping by. They probably were just curious to get a look at us, given that we were all over the news. At one point, a doctor in his mid-forties stopped in and looked me right in the eye. I could tell that he was trying to get the measure of me, trying to figure out what made me tick. He didn’t say a word for fifteen or twenty seconds. Finally he spoke. “You’re so calm,” he said. “It’s incredible.” He was mistaken. I didn’t feel calm at all. At that point, I was feeling numb and out of sorts. I just couldn’t relax until I knew the count was 155.
Finally, at 7:40 P.M., more than four hours after we landed in the Hudson, Captain Arnie Gentile, a union rep, came in and gave me the word. “It’s official,” he said.
I felt the most intense feeling of relief I’d ever felt in my life. I felt like the weight of the universe had been lifted off of my heart. I probably let out a long breath. I’m not sure I smiled. I was too spent to celebrate.
It had been the most harrowing day of my life, but I was incredibly grateful for this ending. We hadn’t saved the Airbus 320. That was ruined. But the people on the plane, they would be returning to their families. All of them.
16. STORIES HEARD, LIVES TOUCHED
I AM USED to it now.
I open a letter and five one-dollar bills fall out. “Mr. Sullenberger, Great job! I’d like to buy you a beer, albeit a cheap domestic one.”
A fax arrives: “In this crazy world, it’s good to know that chance still favors the prepared mind. Good job, Captain!”
A letter comes with an illustration of Snoopy in an exhilarated dance pose. The caption: “Oh Happy Day!” The letter writer is a woman from New Jersey. “We on the East Coast are still scarred by 9/11. It seemed all in the tristate area lost a family member, a friend, a neighbor, a coworker. Your splash in the river made us feel elated, serene, and happy!”
I have gotten thousands of messages such as these since Flight 1549. I have received ten thousand e-mails from people who tracked down my safety consulting business online. Another five thousand e-mails arrived at my personal e-mail address. I don’t know much about Facebook, but my kids tell me I have more than 635,000 fans there.
I’ve heard from people on every continent except Antarctica. And almost every time I’m at the mall or in a restaurant, strangers come up to say they don’t mean to bother me, but they just want to say thank you.
While a few of these correspondents had loved ones or friends on Flight 1549, the vast majority did not. What happened on that airplane touched them deeply enough that they felt compelled to reach out to me and my family. Some tell me that after hearing about our flight, they found themselves reflecting on a seminal moment in their own lives or thinking about a person who inspired them. Others ended up reviewing the dreams they had for their children or feeling renewed grief about losses they’re still trying to understand.
I have become a recipient of people’s reflections because I am now the public face of an unexpectedly uplifting moment that continues to resonate. Hearing from so many people, paying attention to their stories—that’s part of my new job.
I’ve come to see their thankfulness as a generous gift, and I don’t want to diminish their kind words by denying them. Though it made me uncomfortable at first, I’ve made a decision to graciously accept people’s thanks. At the same time I don’t strive to take it as my own. I recognize that I have been given a role to play, and maybe some good can happen as a result.
It’s not a role that I had ever experienced before. I spent a lifetime being anonymous. I was proud of my wife, proud of my kids, but I lived a quiet home life. My work life was also mostly hidden, conducted on the other side of a locked cockpit door.
But now I am recognized everywhere, and I have people coming up to me with tears in their eyes. They’re not sure why they’re crying. Their feelings about what the flight represents, and then the surprise of meeting me, just cause a swell of emotions. When people seem so grateful to me, my foremost feeling is that I don’t deserve this attention or their effusive thanks. I feel like a bit of an impostor. And yet, I also feel I have an obligation not to disappoint them. I don’t want to dismiss their gratitude or suggest that they shouldn’t feel the way they do.
Of course, I’m still not comfortable with the “hero” mantle. As Lorrie likes to say, a hero is someone who risks his life running into a burning building. Flight 1549 was different, because it was thrust upon me and my crew. We did our best, we turned to our training, we made good decisions, we didn’t give up, we valued every life on that plane—and we had a good outcome. I don’t know that “heroic” describes that. It’s more that we had a philosophy of life, and we applied it to the things we did that day, and the things we did on a lot of days leading up to it.
As I see it, rather than an act of heroism, that philosophy is what people are responding to.
They also embraced news of Flight 1549 because it came at a moment when a lot of people were feeling pretty low.
On January 15, 2009, the day of our flight, the world was in transition. The presidency of the United States was about to change hands, which had some people feeling hopeful and others feeling nervous about the road ahead. It was a time of great uncertainty, with two wars and the world economy falling apart. On a lot of fronts, people felt confused and fearful. They wondered if we as a society had lost our way or gotten off track. Some people had been questioning even our basic competence.
They heard about Flight 1549 and it was unlike most stories they learn of through the media, in that the news continued to be good. The plane had landed safely. Passengers and rescuers had reached out and helped one another. Everyone on the plane had lived. It was all positive news (unless of course you owned or insured that Airbus A320—then the news wasn’t as completely upbeat).
For people watching reports of Flight 1549 on their televisions, this felt remarkable. It enabled them to reassure themselves that all the ideals that we believe in are true, even if they’re not always evident. They decided that the American character still exists, that what we think our country stands for is still there.
I’ve come to have a greater appreciation of life—and of America, too—through my interactions with so many people since the event. They say they were touched by my story, but so very often I am even more touched by theirs.
WHEN FLIGHT 1549 landed in the Hudson, eighty-four-year-old Herman Bomze watched the rescue from his thirtieth-floor Manhattan apartment overlooking the river.
Mr. Bomze, a retired marine and civil engineer, found himself feeling very moved as passengers scurried into their rafts and onto the wings. He was concerned that all the passengers hadn’t made it out of the plane. He worried the ferries wouldn’t get to everyone in time. He called his daughter, Bracha Nechama, and left her a voice mail to tell her how it affected him. She in turn sent a letter telling me his story.
