Highest Duty - Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger

[RamboLiberal]

The book will be published in October by HarperCollins

Capt. Chesley (Sully) Sullenberger, the hero of January's Miracle on the Hudson, reveals in his new book that he is driven to save lives because he couldn't rescue his father from suicide.

"One of the reasons I think I've placed such a high value on life is that my father took his," Sullenberger writes in his upcoming memoir.

Sullenberger's father, a Texas dentist, suffered from depression. He shot himself in 1995 at age 78.

"I'm willing to work very hard to protect people's lives, to be a good Samaritan, and to not be a bystander, in part because I couldn't save my father."

It's no big surprise that Sullenberger's book - a gripping and genuinely heartwarming account of the splashdown - manages to portray everyone involved as more heroic than himself.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/08/19/2009-08-19_sully_reveals_secret_pain_behind_his_heroism.html#ixzz0OfKrBVMg

[RamboLiberal]

1. Two other Books on this Flight coming out in November

Miracle on the Hudson: The Survivors of Flight 1549 Tell Their Extraordinary Stories of Courage, Faith, and Determination

Product Description
There were 155 passengers on board Flight 1549, and each presumbably thought this was the end of their lives. How did it feel to be aboard that flight as a passenger, and what has the accident done to the lives of those on board? We go right inside the fuselage as the realization dawns that something is terribly wrong. We hear the silence of no engines. We watch as the George Washington Bridge passes just 900 feet below the plane. We hear the words, 'brace for impact.' Then we, too, are in the Hudson, freezing water pouring in to the plane, the emergency doors opening, and the frigid air welcoming these survivors of a miracle back to life.

We hear from mothers, daughters, sons, fathers. They include Tess Sosa, who was flying that day with her husband and two children, the only family aboard the plane, and Jay McDonald, who had recently recovered from a brain tumor once thought to have been terminal. Casey Jones, who now helps to run an organization of the survivors, actually called his daughter from the wing of the aircraft right after the ditching. She said, 'A plane crash? Daddy?' Miracle on the Hudson is an inspirational tale of survival—and gratitude.

About the Author
Bill Prochnau and Laura Parker are a husband-and-wife writing team who have written collaborative articles for Vanity Fair, where Prochnau is a contributing editor. Prochnau, a former national correspondent for The Washington Post, has written three acclaimed books. Parker covered aviation as a Washington Post and USA Today national correspondent and was later promoted to head the Post's Southern Bureau in Miami.

Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson

On January 15, 2009, a US Airways Airbus A320 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport in New York when a flock of Canada geese collided with it, destroying both of its engines. Over the next three minutes, the plane’s pilot, Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger, managed to glide to a safe landing in the Hudson River. It was an instant media sensation, the “Miracle on the Hudson,” and Captain Sully was the hero. But how much of the success of this dramatic landing can actually be credited to the skill of the pilot? To what extent is the “Miracle on the Hudson” the result of extraordinary—but not widely known, and in some cases quite controversial—advances in aviation and computer technology over the past twenty years? In Fly by Wire, one of America’s greatest journalists takes us on a strange and unexpected journey into the fascinating world of advanced aviation. From the testing laboratories where engineers struggle to build a jet engine that can systematically resist bird attacks, through the creation of the A320 in France, to the political and social forces that have sought to minimize the impact of the revolutionary fly-by-wire technology, William Langewiesche assembles the untold stories necessary to truly understand the “Miracle on the Hudson” and makes us question our assumptions about human beings in modern aviation.


About the Author

WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE is the author of six previous books—including American Ground (NPP, 2002), The Outlaw Sea (NPP, 2004), and, most recently, The Atomic Bazaar (FSG, 2007). He is the international editor for Vanity Fair.

[RamboLiberal]

2. I'm reading Captain Sullenberger's book now

and Miracle on the Hudson: The Survivors of Flight 1549 Tell Their Extraordinary Stories of Courage, Faith, and Determination

Both books I highly recommend. Sully is such a decent and honest man. One item that stuck with me so far is some numbnuts Chief pilot with US Airlines threatened to suspend Sully for 2 weeks because Sully on 2 occassions wouldn't pull away from the gate when he had empty seats on a flight and he knew there were people trying to get on as standbys. The gate agent was more worried about the plane leaving the gate on the exact minute than the 2 minutes late and in 2nd instance 9 minutes late to get those passengers aboard.

And Sully made up the time on flying time. And he's done other little kindnesses for passengers because he feels like he represents the airline and he's a very decent human being.

He also lays it on the line how cost-cutting by the airlines are endangering all of us and what it's done to the crews.