http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/24/chesley-sully-sullenberge_0_n_169512.html
Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger To Congress: My Pay Has Been Cut 40 Percent
In Recent Years, Pension Terminated
The air traffic controller who handled Flight 1549 thought ditching in
the Hudson River amounted to a death sentence for all aboard. Now the
veteran pilot who pulled off the ditching safely says harsh pay cuts are
driving experienced pilots from the cockpit.
"People don't survive landings on the Hudson River," 10-year veteran
controller Patrick Harten told a House subcommittee Tuesday in his first
public description of how he tried to land the jetliner that lost power
in both jets when it hit Canada geese after takeoff from New York's
LaGuardia Airport.
"I thought it was his own death sentence," Harten said of the moment
when US Airways pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger radioed that he was
going into the river. Defying the odds, Sullenberger safely glided the
Airbus A320 down and all 155 people aboard survived the Jan. 15 water
landing.
Sullenberger, a 58-year-old who joined a US Airways predecessor in 1980,
told the House aviation subcommittee that his pay has been cut 40
percent in recent years and his pension has been terminated and replaced
with a promise "worth pennies on the dollar" from the federally created
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. These cuts followed a wave of airline
bankruptcies after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks compounded by
the current recession, he said.
"The bankruptcies were used by some as a fishing expedition to get what
they could not get in normal times," Sullenberger said of the airlines.
He said the problems began with the deregulation of the industry in the
1970s.
The reduced compensation has placed "pilots and their families in an
untenable financial situation," Sullenberger said. "I do not know a
single professional airline pilot who wants his or her children to
follow in their footsteps."
The subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee heard from the crew of Flight 1549, the air traffic controller
who handled the flight and aviation experts to examine what safety
lessons could be learned from the accident.
Sullenberger's copilot Jeffrey B. Skiles said unless federal laws are
revised to improve labor-management relations "experienced crews in the
cockpit will be a thing of the past." And Sullenberger added that
without experienced pilots "we will see negative consequences to the
flying public."
Sullenberger himself has started a consulting business to help make ends
meet. Skiles added, "For the last six years, I have worked seven days a
week between my two jobs just to maintain a middle class standard of
living."
Controller Harten riveted the hearing with his account of the 3.5
minutes during which he spoke with the crippled jetliner after the bird
strike at an altitute of 2,750 feet.
When Sullenberger said he couldn't make it either back to LaGuardia or
to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey and would ditch in the the Hudson
River that separates New York and New Jersey, Harten testified, "I
believed at that moment I was going to be the last person to talk to
anyone on that plane alive."
But Sullenberger delicately glided the jetliner into the river in one
piece near ferry boats that picked the passengers off the planes wings
before it sank in the icy waters.
Harten, who has spent his entire career at the radar facility in
Westbury, N.Y., that handles air traffic within 40 miles of three major
airports, struggled vainly to help get the airliner safely to a landing
strip.
Making lightning-quick decisions, Harten communicated with 14 other
entities in the three minutes after the bird strike as he diverted other
aircraft and advised controllers elsewhere to hold aircraft and clear
runways for 1549.
First, Harten tried to return the plane to LaGuardia Airport, asking the
airport's tower to clear runway 13. But Sullenberger calmly reported:
"We're unable."
Then Harten offered another LaGuardia runway. Again, Sullenberger
reported, "Unable." He said he might be able to make Teterboro Airport
in New Jersey.
But when Harten directed Sullenberger to turn onto a heading for
Teterboro, the pilot responded: "We can't do it .... We're going to be
in the Hudson."
"I asked him to repeat himself even though I heard him just fine," said
Harten. "I simply could not wrap my mind around those words."
At that moment, Harten said he lost radio contact with flight and was
certain it "had gone down."
Afterward, Harten said he told his wife, "I felt like I had been hit by
a bus."
NTSB investigators have said bird remains found in both engines of the
downed plane have been identified as Canada geese.
Sullenberger and Skiles said anyone who's spent much time in cockpits
has encountered bird strikes but that this one was exceptionally severe
in knocking out both engines. Some gulls don't even dent the airplane,
Skiles said, but this "was a bigger bird than I've ever hit before."
The bird problem has been growing, said John E. Ostrom, chairman of the
Bird Strike Committee-USA and a manager at the Minneapolis-St. Paul
International Airport. Since 1990, the number of Canada geese that live
year-round in the country rather than migrating has grown from 1 million
to 3.9 million and the population of 24 of the 36 largest bird species
has increased, Ostrom testified.
The crew and passengers of a helicopter that crashed en route to an oil
platform on Jan. 4 weren't as lucky. The National Transportation Safety
Board reported Monday that investigators have found evidence birds were
involved in the accident near Morgan City, La., that killed eight of
nine people aboard.
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