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Clearly, the crew was fabulous. Until I heard this tape I did not know what a fabulous job the controller did. In those 3 minutes he arranged for 2 runways at LaGuardia, 2 runways at Teterboro and a runway at Newark. During all of that he did not badger the crew with anything unnecessary and continued to control his other traffic. He is another critical contributor to this incredible event.

very, very neat. The pilot and the controller both certainly deserve attention.

Yeah. Offtopic but related, one of the things that bugs me about Hollywood is that (these days) whenever they they portray an emergency situation like this, there’s a ton of screaming and histrionics. See the movie ‘Armaggedon’ for example. Hardly ever do you see an accurate portrayal of this kind of understated grace under pressure (which I associate with the midwest, even if Sully’s from California).

A (perhaps small) nit–the audio you and others are playing is note (it sounds to me like) “cockpit audio’

It sounds like the Empire Departure adio.

And for the record, I would not for a second address the Captain or refer to him as “Sully”

It must be “Captain Sullivan, sir” or “Captain Sullivan”, respectively.

No offense intended, but for the record, it is “Captain SULLENBERGER.”

“No offense intended, but for the record, it is “Captain SULLENBERGER.””

Gahhhh!

I can’t believe I did that.

I complained because when I see “Sully” I think”Andrew Sullivan” for whom I have unlimited distaste.

It was exactly that error that I wanted to avoid, and I committed it my self!

Mea maxima culpa.

Thanks for straightening me out.

You’re welcome.

I was trying to make my notation sound light hearted. It was not meant as a criticism. I hope you took it that way.

No matter what, listening to the tapes and reading all of the transcripts, everyone in this whole incident was amazingly calm, focused and professional. You can find the audio and transcripts at:
http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/accident_incident/1549/

Simply amazing.

Thanks for being gentle–a hard slapping would have been justified.

The Captain (deservedly so) gets a lot of the credit, but you know, listening to the tapes of the TRACON and the towers reminds me that the controllers have a tremendous responsibility, and a huge capacity for making things worse.

What we hear is professionals doing their jobs under extreme duress, no panic, just “we have an unusual problem here, what do we need to do about it”, and then doing it. Unseen and largely unheard are controllers working out aand dealing with the ripples of problems–if we stop departures, then what? If we keep traffic away from the problem, where will it go and what problems will that cause. And all the wile, handling other traffic that has to be kept safe.