[April 16th
marks the 150th anniversary of aviation pioneer Wilbur Wright’s birth. So this
week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of key moments and figures in aviation
history, leading up to a weekend post on the Wright Brothers themselves!]
On the quiet
lessons of an averted disaster, and the recent film that didn’t quite learn
them.
No disaster is a
good disaster (I’ll be writing more about historical disasters in a few weeks
as part of a series on the 80th anniversary of the Hindenburg fire and crash), but there’s
something particularly frightening and horrific about an airplane crash.
Perhaps it’s because the very act of flying in a man-made machine still feels
(at least to this AmericanStudier) somewhat artificial and even unbelievable,
and thus that crashes (rare as they certainly are) feel always possible or
close. Perhaps it’s because, compared to most natural disasters or other kinds
of transporation accidents, a plane crash feels so assuredly fatal for all
involved. Perhaps it’s due to all the continuing mysteries associated with
plane crashes, even in an era when we believe we understand technology so well:
the Bermuda
Triangle, the disappearance of flights like the recent and still-missing Malaysia
Airlines Flight 370, those infamous black
boxes and the stories they do and don’t tell. In any case, plane crashes
are uniquely unnerving (to say the least)—which is why, when the actions of a
heroic pilot like Chesley “Sully”
Sullenberger can help avert a potential crash and save the lives of all on
board, they feel particularly impressive.
The details
of Sully’s rescue are pretty well known: he was piloting a US Airways
flight out of New York’s LaGuardia Airport on January 15, 2009 when a flock of
Canada geese collided with his plane, damaging both engines; Sully and air
traffic controllers discussed returning to LaGuardia or trying for New Jersey’s
Teterboro Airport, but decided both options were too risky and opted for an
emergency water landing in the Hudson river; he pulled off that very
tricky landing and saved the lives of all 155 passengers and crew. What’s
perhaps less well known is that Sully wasn’t just a pilot with nearly 30 years
of commercial flying experience; he was also a very experienced instructor
and investigator, having provided aerial
combat training for pilots during the Vietnam War, and then serving during his commercial flying
career as a pilot instructor, an Air Line Pilots Association safety
chairman and accident investigator, and an accident investigator for the
National Transportation Safety Board. All of which is to say, Sully’s decisions
and actions in January 2009 weren’t simply the result of quick thinking or good
instincts or bravery (although all those factors were in play); they were also the
product of decades of instruction and training, of investigations and expertise
in both aviation and crashes. None of that is to take away from what was
required of Sully at that particular moment—but I would argue that a career of
teaching and learning provided the impressive preparation and tools that Sully
was then able to utilize in the most significant minutes of his career and
life.
I’ll admit to
not having had the chance to see Clint Eastwood’s recent film
Sully (2016), starring Tom Hanks as Sullenberger,
but from everything I’ve seen and read about the film, it seems to have not
taken that lesson of the “Miracle on the Hudson” to heart much at all. Perhaps
believing that Sully’s crash landing was either too well known or too
anti-climactic to provide sufficient dramatic tension for the film, Eastwood
and his screenwriter Todd Komarnicki apparently (again, going on reviews and
responses here—feel free to offer corrections in comments!) decided to turn National
Transportation Safety Board crash investigators (ie, folks in the same role
Sully had performed many times) into
villains, out to second-guess Sully’s actions and to threaten and potentially
destroy his reputation and career. Besides ramping up the dramatic tension,
this choice aligns the film with Eastwood’s overarching perspective as a
filmmaker (and, it
seems, a person), which often pits heroic individual figures against
frustrating and even vindictive institutions and bureaucracies. Clint’s of
course entitled to feel however he pleases, and to tell the stories he wants as
an artist—but to my mind, the story of Sully and his heroic rescue reveals
precisely the opposite lesson: that institutions and communal efforts can help
prepare us for the hardest moments, not in opposition to what we can and must
do as individuals but as a vital complement to and training for those occasions
for bravery and heroism. Now that I think about it, I think that’d make for a
pretty good story too.
Special post
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other aviation histories you’d highlight?
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