GREAT AVIATION QUOTES
Sully Sullenberger

There are 5 quotes matching Sully Sullenberger in the collection:

Got any ideas?

Actually not.

Captain Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger III & First Officer Jeff Skiles

Captain Sully asking for input from F/O Jeff Skiles (and his reply) while flying an unpowered A320 over New York after suffering a bird strike that disabled both engines at low altitude. They glided perfectly into the Hudson river with no loss of life. From NTSB transcript, US Airways flight 1549, 15 January 2009.

This is the Captain. brace for impact.

Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger III

Captain of US Airways Flight 1549, at 15:49 local time, 15 January 2009, an A320 that had lost power from both engines after flying into a flock of birds. CVR transcript, NTSB final report. Three seconds later the GPWS sounded “one thousand”. Two minutes later they were in the Hudson River.

That’s what we’re trained to do.

Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger III

Captain of US Airways flight 1549. The A320 ditched in the Hudson River with no loss of life after suffering a low-altitude duel engine failure.

The New York Times reported on 16 January 2009 that he:

“[H]ad just performed a remarkable feat of flying. Some were calling it a miracle. But there he stood, calmly, inside the glass waiting room at the New York Waterway terminal on Pier 79, speaking to police officials. His fine gray hair was unruffled, and his navy blue pilot’s uniform had barely a wrinkle.” 15 January 2009.

Everything is unpresedented until it happens for the first time.

Falsely attributed to 'Sully' Sullenberger

Also seen as “There is never any precedent until it happens for the first time”. Many internet quote sites, as well as the 2024 book Crisis-Ready Teams and 2023 book Toolkit for Turbulence, cite this as a Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III line from his 9 June 2009 testimony to the NTSB investigation of the 'Miracle on the Hudson'. But the line does not appear anywhere in the official transcript. At all. It also isn’t in his 2009 book Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters.

However, it does appear in the script of the 2016 movie Sully, written by Todd Komarnicki, being said by Sully, played by Tom Hanks.



The movie does a fantastic job showing what it’s like to fly an A320. And with over 14,000 hours in Airbus cockpits, I sorta know what it looks and feels like! But the film waved goodbye to reality when it came to the NTSB investigation. Good drama yes, but all fakey fake invented conflict Hollywood movie magic.



The actual NTSB hearing did include testimony from Dr. Richard Dolbeer, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture expert on human-wildlife conflicts:

“So while, you know, double ingestion such as happened in the US Airways incident are not common, they certainly have occurred with some regularity, as we've documented in the database and of course, we know the database does not capture all of the strikes that occur in the United States, so it provides -- but it does provide insight into what's going on and I think it's important to recognize, given the large bird population increases and the flocking behavior of those, that these double engine ingestions are a real event that happens.”

There can’t be a checklist for everything. Procedural compliance is a necessary but not sufficient condition for safety.

Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger

Interview with Roger Rapoport and Shem Malmquist, April 2021.

Don’t see what you were looking for? Try the home page, or do a super search: