Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
His pension was “cut” because U.S. Airways went bankrupt, and its pension liabilities were assumed by the PBGF, as mentioned below. There was no retaliation, etc. ALL US Airways pensioners got the same treatment.
“A US Airways pilot with as much experience as Sullenberger makes about $130,000 to $150,000 a year. Sullenberger told Congress last year that his pay was cut 40 percent in recent years, and his pension was terminated and replaced with a promise “worth pennies on the dollar” from the federally created Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. The cuts followed a wave of airline bankruptcies — including two at U.S. Airways — after Sept. 11 and were compounded by the recession.”
Many long-time commercial pilots got caught in the same situation. Poor management by airline executives was, I submit, the reason for this.
By the way, don’t think of Sullenberger as a “hero.” He was a highly skilled and professional aviator who, along with First Officer Skiles, did his job well.
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
I worked for USAirways also. During lengthy negotiations, pilots traded their pension protection in favor of another matter that was potentially on the chopping block – hourly pay. The flight attendants, at the same period, agreed to take a pay cut but demanded to keep their pension benefits (which, yes, PBGC now handles.) I and many other retired USA Airways flight attendants do receive a pension. Unfortunately, the pilots who were affected by this contract negotiation do not.
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
U.S. Airways was a compilation of several airlines through mergers and acquisitions. Also, the company went through at least two bankruptcies. Captain Sullenberger began his airline career with Air California, which was merged into U.S. Airways. When airlines merge, the pilot seniority lists are merged, and pilots of the airline that is larger usually determine which airline’s pilots will lose seniority. Also, the fate of the pension plan is dictated by the larger airline. Almost every airline in the United States has gone through at least one bankruptcy since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1979. Many airline pilots had their pensions either drastically cut or completely dissolved, leaving the pilots receiving a small percentage of what the pension should have been paid now from the Government Pension Guarantee Corporation. Many of the airlines had their pensions stolen by their CEOs, such as Frank Lorenzo and Carl Inchon.
I don’t know what you mean by cut, but here are some things that determine a pilot’s retirement income. Age at retirement, length of time of pilot employment at that airline, type of airplane flown in the last few years of employment, and income in the last years of employment. And finally, the number of times your airline has endured bankruptcy. As for Captain Sullenberger specifically, he was well under mandatory retirement age and chose to take early retirement in accordance with the pilot union contract in force at the time.
Will we ever see a greater piloting feat than Sully Sullenberger’s emergency landing 2024?
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
There were many such feats, with some of them being much more complicated than Sully’s landing. The Hudson Crash became so famous simply because of media hype and the power of social media, something which we never had some time back.
Back in 2002, this pilot did a very similar ditching under much harsher conditions. I bet most of you have never heard of or even seen him.
He is Captain Abdul Rozaq. He was piloting a Garuda Indonesia-operated B737–300 when it hit a strong weather cell on the final descent. This caused a double engine flame out at 19000ft. There were two relight attempts followed by an APU start by him and his first officer. Unfortunately, neither of them worked, which caused a full instrument blackout. Later on, it was found that there were maintenance issues with the batteries. So, for a while, the aircraft was flown completely blind through Instrument Meteorological Conditions.
As the aircraft descended through 8000ft, the weather improved, which made Capt. Abdul to notice Bengawan Solo River. The aircraft managed to land there, and it to this day is hailed as one of the most successful ditchings in the history of flight. Only one died out of 54 people on board, and the one who died was a cabin crew member. So, yes, there were, and there will be, a lot more great feats in aviation. Captain Sully’s landing is one of them, but I will always say that it was very over-excited.
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
Will we ever see a greater piloting feat than Sully Sullenberger’s emergency landing 2024?
Originally Answered: Will we ever see a greater piloting feat than Sully Sullenberger’s emergency plane landing??
Sully did a fabulous job, so I’d always maintain his excellent save. But it’s not at all the best airliner save ever flown. His fame resulted from two factors. One, it wasn’t his fault. Two, it happened in view of millions of people.
THE BEST: Others have mentioned UAL 232, which is the best. Again, the crew was not at fault in the crash, which is essential to credit a crew with miraculous flying.
Most pilots wonder if we’d have even come close. That crew’s performance was miraculous. They came within a few seconds of saving everyone from what would have been 100 percent fatal in the hands of most pilots. I think I’m a great pilot, but I’ve never thought I’d have come close to doing as well as that crew. True heroes.
Sadly, the crew has suffered terrible mental anguish over the 111 lives lost, while the rest of us pilots who weren’t in that cockpit with them think they’re supermen for saving 189 lives.
AN OLD ADAGE: Before citing the next three, let me quote an adage: A superior pilot uses superior judgment to avoid needing superior skill
That adage condemns these other three examples of superior flying because they were preceded by terrible judgment. But they are excellent at flying. Look them up on Wikipedia.
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
TWA 841: The 2nd-best airliner save ever, after UAL 232. Like Sully, this would likely have been fatal had the plane not been in the hands of a seasoned, former military pilot. This flight made the longest dive by an airliner in which the plane did not crash. It was saved by extraordinary aviating skill. However, the NTSB determined that the crew took prior action in violation of the flight manual to put the plane into the dive.
It’s a fact that many other pilots were doing the exact thing that the NTSB named as the cause of this near-crash. I was flying 727s at the time, and I can assure you that after this incident, no one I knew EVER did it again! The Captain and crew claimed they did not perform the prohibited action beforehand. We’ll never know for sure, but anyone other than a military pilot wouldn’t have gone to the extremes this Captain did to pull it out.
Air Canada 143: Fuel starvation in a 767, but glided to a landing with no fatalities. It is very nicely done, with superb calm and skill. But few pilots would have needed to make the save in the first place.
Air Transat 236: Same thing, only with an even more heroic landing. But again, very few pilots would have gotten into that emergency.
So, the last three do not represent high pilot skill because of the demonstration of poor judgment that preceded the demonstration of superior skill.
(My apologies to former TWA Captain Gibson of Flight 841. I know you said you didn’t do it, but I knew 727 captains who did, so I’ve always been suspicious. Still, that was some incredible flying!)
Will we ever see a greater piloting feat than Sully Sullenberger’s emergency landing 2024?
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
Originally Answered: Will we ever see a greater piloting feat than Sully Sullenberger’s emergency plane landing??
I am sorry, but I question the assumption that he was a “great piloting feat.” Yes, the story is great, and indeed the outcome was wonderful. But a great flying feat? I beg to differ.
Ditching on smooth water like the Hudson is different technique-wise than landing on a runway. Although he had no thrust, on every normal airline landing before touchdown, the throttles are pulled to idle above the runway, giving negligible thrust in the flare to touchdown, regardless of water or concrete. It is not difficult either way.
Sullenberger’s actions were not much different than what most other pilots would have done. Ditching in a river is not that difficult. A river is much wider and much longer than any runway. Almost every pilot I have ever flown with would and could accomplish a similar and successful ditching.
Of course, ditching in the Hudson begets great fame. A much greater feat by UAL Captain Al Haynes and his associates gets less fame, although it was, by far, a much greater feat. What happened in Sioux City, even though it far out-shined Sullenberger’s, is sadly overlooked (except in some other answers here)
Here is what I wrote a while ago in answer to a similar question. It is still valid.
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
Incredibly, by following the checklist, this occurred: “FDR data indicated that both thrust levers were set to the idle position at 1528:01, about 50 seconds after the bird encounter. The N1 and N2 speeds for the left engine both decreased…” NTSB [When one is in dire need of thrust, going to the idle position is counterintuitive!]
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) also noted that Captain Sullenberger incorrectly chose to use “flaps 2” instead of the required flaps 3 for the ditching. However, the NTSB decided under the circumstance that this decision was “reasonable.”
The NTSB was also critical of Captain Sullenberger’s “difficulty maintaining his intended airspeed during the final approach… “[that] resulted in high angles-of-attack, which contributed to the difficulties in flaring the airplane, the high descent rate at touchdown, and the fuselage damage.”
Finally, the haunting question that lingers in many pilots’ minds, and one that is curiously not mentioned in the NTSB report, is this: Why did the Captain never push the throttles to the Takeoff-Go-Around (TOGA) setting?
Most pilots with a sudden and significant loss of thrust and low to the ground would instinctively firewall the thrust levers to TOGA, trying for maximum thrust. Why the Captain apparently did not remains a mystery. Had he done so with the remaining residual thrust on the engine(s), perhaps by going to TOGA, he might have gained enough power to return to La Guardia rather than ditching in the Hudson. We will never know.
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
While not perfect, Capt. Sullenberger and his rarely mentioned crew members were all still extraordinary in their fine performance. However, my airline aviation heroes remain …. Captain Haynes and the crew of
[Edit] I was talking to a fellow airline captain the other day, and he mentioned this: “Both pilots were looking not where they should have been looking. A flock of Canada geese is easy to spot well over a mile away…..”
Avoiding a large gaggle of geese, if you are looking outside to see them as you should be, is easy to avoid from that distance. If they had seen and avoided the geese, this story would never have happened in the first place.
“See and avoid” is an old aviator axiom.
Why aren’t more airline pilots as trained as Captain Sully 2024?
Because taxpayers no longer want to pay for it. But worry not, I will show you that it’s okay the way it is now—and yes, this answer includes direct knowledge of Sully’s training because I got the same training at the same time.
IT WAS CRAZY EXPENSIVE
When I was hired as an airline pilot in 1979, about 99% of us were former military jet pilots. We had been given a year of pilot training at the cost in the 1970s of more than a million dollars—which equates to about four million dollars today.
Then I spent five years flying jets for the Air Force, which means that taxpayers spent more than $200,000 per year on my training—about $800,000 per year in today’s dollars for my training plus my salary and benefits—and then I was free to take that expensive taxpayer asset and turn it over to a commercial airline.
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
I was lucky in that I flew a lot of hours every year in the Presidential Wing at Andrews—I averaged 600 hours per year. So, that works out to $1,333 per hour in today’s dollars that taxpayers spent for my training.
The hourly pay of today’s airline captains is somewhere around 10% of what taxpayers spent just for my training.
I flew 600 hours per year, while the average Air Force pilot flew more like 200, which means taxpayers spent about $4,000 per hour for them because we had only a five-year commitment, and then we took that expensive training to an airline. The average hourly rate for today’s airline captain is somewhere around 3% to 4% of the overall average cost of military pilot training in the era when Sully went through.
Turning over that expensive training to the airlines was unsustainable.
BUT THERE’S MORE
I fly now in a soaring club—we fly gliders. Several of our instructors are, like me, former USAF pilots, including one who went to the USAF Academy with Sully. They were friends when they both flew as glider instructor pilots on the Academy’s glider team. They started USAF pilot training the same month I did.
The academy graduates had probably a million dollars spent on their training before they even got to pilot training—so you can double the numbers I cited above in the case of Academy graduate pilots.
That was even more unsustainable.
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
THE ECONOMICS
Today’s military pilots owe the taxpayers ten years of service rather than the five years of service I owed in exchange for my training.
That means that by the time they are eligible to separate, they have 11 years of service and are more than halfway to retirement.
At that point, they face a choice of leaving behind those 11 years toward retirement and going to an airline job, which is a very unstable job with a very uncertain future and a very weak—and perhaps non-existent—retirement system.
So, most of them complete their 20 years and then take their Lt Col retirement pay and, at about age 42, fly for an airline. The instability, lack of benefits, and lack of retirement are not much of a worry for them because they have a taxpayer-funded safety net.
Meanwhile, as they are putting in their 20 years of military service, the country needs airline pilots, and so you get today’s parade of very young pilots with little experience. They NEVER had any training at all, like what the U.S. taxpayers gave me for a full year.
Because think about it, who is going to pay four million dollars to train each one of them?
Those days were not a sustainable economic model. But Sully, our mutual friend in my glider club, and I were lucky to have learned to fly before the realities of economics set in.
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
BUT IT’S OKAY
Those days are not coming back, which is totally okay.
Back in our heyday, jets were hard to fly. We were alone with our training and our wits, and we were responsible for whatever weather or circumstances appeared on the other side of our cockpit windshields.
But today?
The airline dispatch system thoroughly plans and vets each flight. The aircraft monitor themselves far better than we ever did. The navigation systems are astounding. The systems are easy to use.
Today’s airline pilots don’t need as much training.
THINK ABOUT IT!
Decades ago, deadly crashes were routine, and yet the captains were highly-trained military pilots who had thousands of hours of flight time before they were hired.
And yet they crashed and killed people—regularly, like a couple of times every year.
Today’s pilots have a fraction of the training, but the accident rate is an order of magnitude better than what we achieved when all of us were military trained. And that is literally an order of magnitude because this country now averages more than a decade between fatal crashes due to pilot error when it used to suffer several per year.
It’s okay!
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
Why aren’t more airline pilots as trained as Captain Sully 2024?
They are trained just as Captain Sully was. His training was not different than any major airline pilot. Airline pilot training is standardized and, in the U.S., must meet many very specific FAA objectives. While Sullenberger’s example was admirable and unique, most pilots at the three different airlines I flew with – including Sully’s – all had very similar, if not equal, training. Indeed, most pilots I have flown with could have performed the same feat equally as well.
Why aren’t more airline pilots as trained as Captain Sully?
All airline pilots are trained as well as ‘Sully!!!
Does anyone remember Captain Al Haynes on Flight of UAL 232? Though some people died in that crash, he managed to land a plane with NO Controls available. But by using the differential power of the remaining engines, he managed to get the plane back to Earth without EVERYONE getting killed.
With Skill and Experience, Captain Haynes saved what he could with an absolutely uncontrollable aircraft, as demonstrated by test pilots in a Simulator!
Sully was just like every Airline Pilot; He did what he had to in an emergency!
What makes Captain Sully Sullenberger so special 2024?
I’m not sure that “special” is the right word to use when describing what Capt. Sullenberger did during the event that made him famous, but what he has done for all of us since that day HAS been very special. He made some very quick and very RIGHT decisions on that fateful day, which any number of pilots under the same conditions might or might not have made correctly. His quick decision-making and skill in landing his powerless aircraft in the Hudson River without loss of life was truly a magnificent moment and one in which the pilot profession as a whole can take great pride that such a well-qualified and well-prepared Captain was at the controls that day. But that incident also served to put a very articulate and very powerful spokesperson in place for us to address a number of issues that have arisen since the incident. He has testified before Congress on a number of issues. He has served as an aviation expert for a number of news outlets since the event. He has done a spectacular job of representing the airline pilot profession whenever he has been asked to comment on current aviation events. We could not have a better spokesman and one who is respected and revered not only for his piloting skill but also his command of facts and language. In short, he is the “consummate” airline Captain, and all of us in the profession are grateful for his continuing ability to address current issues with openness and honesty. That is why Sully is “special” to all of us!
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
Was Captain Sully Sullenberger lucky, or could landing a plane on the water with no engines actually be repeated regularly? Would it have been a disaster if a less experienced pilot had been at the controls 2024?
Captain Sullenberger had a lot of things going for him that a less-experienced pilot probably would have difficulty with:
- For one, he is an experienced glider pilot and was able to bring down the aircraft without any power skillfully.
- Second, he knew aircraft systems very well and was smart enough to know to start the APU on the aircraft so that there was some level of hydraulics available for control of the aircraft.
- Finally, in this kind of situation, every second counts, and you have to make critical decisions very quickly – you don’t have time to analyze things overly. A less experienced pilot would probably have taken much more time to analyze the situation and make decisions, and that could have had a fatal impact on the results.
Was Captain Sully Sullenberger lucky, or could landing a plane on the water with no engines actually be repeated regularly? Would it have been a disaster if a less experienced pilot had been at the controls 2024?
The situation was lucky… having a river underneath you when the engines failed at such a low altitude and having plenty of rescuers nearby.
The pilots did a very good job ditching the airplane successfully. That’s not luck… that’s training, skill, and experience… the pilots should be commended for it.
However, that is about what we expect to see in ditching when the aircraft is under control. We would expect to see no fatalities in such a situation with any competent pilot. That doesn’t make what Sully and Skiles did any less heroic… but there is some truth to the statement that the situation is what makes the hero.
The real key to this particular accident was not the ditching itself, though… The physical act of ditching an aircraft successfully is not difficult. Any experienced pilot should be able to do it with the same outcome… everybody lives.
Rather, it was the decision to ditch rather than attempt to return to the airport that made all the difference. The airplane might have been able to return to the airport successfully, but it’s widely acknowledged that ditching the airplane in the Hudson River was the best decision. If the pilots had decided to return to the airport but hadn’t made it, the outcome could have been far worse.
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
Was Captain Sully Sullenberger lucky, or could landing a plane on the water with no engines actually be repeated regularly? Would it have been a disaster if a less experienced pilot had been at the controls 2024?
Sully got lucky. I don’t think anyone was more surprised that they lived through it than him. It was a selfless act of sacrifice – he had no other options, so he put it where he could put it without killing anyone on the ground. I’m sure he, as any pilot would, fully expected it to cartwheel and break up like they usually do when you ditch in water. There is a reason the Navy taught me to eject instead of to ditch. Ditching doesn’t work out well most of the time. Now, admittedly, ejection isn’t an option in passenger jets, but ditching is barely an option. Ethiopia 961 -125 dead, ALM 980 23 dead, Fokker in Manilla – 19 dead, the one in Cicily with 16 dead, and Angara 9007 had 7 dead. It’s been tried many times before and seldom works well. I’ve flown out of that area, and there aren’t options. It is so built up that there is really no place to put a plane. Even the parks have a thousand people lying in the grass. The river was his only option; he took it, and he got lucky
Is Sully Sullenberger the only pilot to successfully ditch a commercial jet into a body of water without fatalities 2024?
Originally Answered: Is Sully Sullenberger the only pilot to successfully ditch an airliner into a body of water without fatalities?
At least 2 turbojet airliners have made water landings that I’m aware of. A JAL DC-8 accidentally landed short of SFO 28R about 3 miles east of the runway. There were no injuries to passengers or crew. The aircraft was recovered, repaired, and operated many years afterward. The was also a DC-9 operated by ONA (Overseas National Airlines) that ditched approximately 30 miles from St. Croix after flying from JFK bound for St. Maarten. After several attempts to land at St. Maarten, they headed for St. Croix but ran out of fuel and ditched. Twenty-two passengers and one crew member died. Thirty-five passengers and 5 crew members survived. Many more may have survived had there been better communication (CRM) between the pilots and flight attendants (according to the NTSB).
Is Sully Sullenberger the only pilot to successfully ditch a commercial jet into a body of water without fatalities 2024?
Originally Answered: Is Sully Sullenberger the only pilot to successfully ditch an airliner into a body of water without fatalities?
He’s the only pilot to successfully ditch an airliner into a body of water without fatalities 300 feet from the shoreline of the media capital of the United States. Captain Sullenberger did a heroic job of ditching his plane…but the live news footage of the rescue crews saving all the passengers made him famous.
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Is Sully Sullenberger the only pilot to successfully ditch a commercial jet into a body of water without fatalities 2024?
Ditchings of large commercial airliners are rare, but Sully and Skiles aren’t the only pilots to have done it. There have been a few, including a few without fatalities. I don’t like using Wikipedia as a reference, but there is a list of ditchings there, and you can use it to research further:
Water landing
The accident closest in circumstance to US Airways 1549 is Garuda Indonesia 421. This airplane also ditched in a river after losing both engines and made a textbook ditching. Unfortunately, the water was very shallow, and the rear of the airplane was severely damaged by impact on the river bed, killing one flight attendant and severely injuring another sitting in the very back of the airplane.
EDIT: I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier, but in the “Shiga in the Bay” incident, the pilot actually unintentionally “ditched” the airplane well short of the runway. He was descending in IMC right into the water and didn’t realize it until too late. Everybody lived…
How many children did Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger have before he became a pilot, and where are they now 2024?
I doubt he had any kids before he became a pilot. I mean, he joined Mensa at 11 and was president of his school’s Latin Club. That’s not exactly a recipe for social success in Denison, Texas. Frankly, I doubt he could have gotten a piece of ass on Death Row in Gatesville Women’s Penitentiary, even if he had a pardon sticking out of his zipper. Then he went to the Air Force Academy, that’s not exactly a pussy rich environment. To top it off, he looked like this:
Yeah, I’ll be willing to bet that the panties started dropping AFTER the wings got pinned on. So, I will stick with no kids before he became a pilot. After he became a pilot, he probably had thirty or forty scattered around the world. I mean, granted, he wasn’t a Naval Aviator, but the LBFMs will still do Air Force guys when there is no ship in port… But yeah, that’s my recurring nightmare – that one day, a bus pulls up in front of my house, and all these tall Filipinos with Burt Reynolds mustaches come running to my door, yelling, “DADDY!” (That’s enough to make you wake up screaming. I Wonder if I could get a VA check for that?)
Anyway – if you’re asking about kids AFTER he became a pilot, he has two adopted daughters. They were teenagers when the accident happened, if I recall, like 14 to 16. Since that was 2009, it’s been 14 years, so they are probably married with their kids now.
Pilots, what’s your ‘Sullenberger’ moment that happened when flying a commercial airline? Did you have any close calls 2024?
I never had anything remotely bad happen like Captain Sullenberger’s experience. I either lost or had to shut down numerous engines on the various aircraft I flew – one at a time. Not a big deal. We went through periodic extensive training just for such occasions.
Most engine failures/shutdowns I experienced were because of poor maintenance. In particular, the Rolls Royce triple spool engines cause lots of trouble. The last month I flew the B747, I had one failure on takeoff and two precautionary shutdowns after takeoff. All were caused by “high vibes” – unbalance. I had the same problem with very similar engines on the L1011. In a year, I had two precautionary shutdowns and a hot section disintegration just after takeoff out of LAX. A flight engineer friend lost 13 engines on the L1011 in a year (one with me).\ Both companies I flew for when I had the problems above had very poor maintenance.
Why was the heroic airline pilot Sully Sullenberger’s pension cut 2024?
What does a half-Indian half-white look like 2024?
‘Onee-Chan Wa Game O Suruto Hito Ga Kawaru Onee-chan,’