January 20, 2009

Flight 1549 On the Hudson: A Miracle?

Since late last week anyone more alert than, say, a block of wood, has been obsessing over the dramatic story of US Airways Flight 1549. For any blocks of wood among my readers, this was the commercial airline flight that sucked some extremely (and briefly) surprised Canada geese into both engines and lost power 3,000 feet over New York City.

The pilot of the airplane, Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger III (for reasons that should be fairly obvious, everyone calls him “Sully”), made a series of split-second decisions, flew dead-stick across Midtown, barely cleared the George Washington Bridge, and executed a masterful crash landing in the middle of the Hudson River. All 150 passengers and crew aboard walked away from Flight 1549 without serious injury.

I found myself a little bit uncomfortable that this story has been labeled “The Miracle on the Hudson,” although it took me a while to figure out why. It was a lot of things – wonderful, heart-warming, spectacular, amazing, even life-affirming. And certainly very fortunate. But one thing it was not was a miracle.

You see, to me a miracle is something like magic, where the thing that happens is outside the laws of nature. Turning water into wine, or parting the sea, or George W. Bush admitting a mistake – those are miracles.

What we really saw on board Flight 1549 was a sublime example of a team of talented people, led by a highly skilled captain and a crew thoroughly trained to do the jobs they were expected to do. We saw a pilot and crew make use of every sliver of good luck they could find to work toward the best possible outcome.

And then there were the ferry and water taxi captains – those Magellans of the Manhattan waterways who are sometimes afforded about the same respect as the guys who run the Tilt-a-Whirl at the county fair. Ferry Captain Vince Lombardi, heading out for Hoboken, was startled to see the A320 in the river with 150 people standing on the wings, floating down toward Battery Park. He reacted instantly, ordering his crew to implement the “man overboard drill”  and charged to the rescue.

So what we really saw was the result of careful and systematic preparation – ditching and evacuation plans on the plane, rescue procedures on the ferries and water taxis, and thorough water disaster training by the fire department. And we saw competent professionals making the best use of all that preparation, doing exactly what they had been trained to do.

This is not to suggest that Captain Sully, or his crew, or the captains and crews of the ferries and water taxis – or even the passengers of Flight 1549, who shrugged off panic and helped each other to safety – are not all heroes. They are, in every sense of the word. In fact, it seems like calling their experience a miracle actually detracts from their heroism. If there was a divine hand in the outcome of Flight 1549, it was seen in putting all those capable people right where they were.

I think one big reason Flight 1549 might look like such a wonder to us is that over the past few years our expectations have been driven to an all-time low. Our national leadership has been so thoroughly and breathtakingly incompetent that running across people who are actually good at doing what they were hired to do seems downright supernatural.

That brings me to the other story that has dominated the news recently, the one that even all the blocks of wood should be up to speed with. I’m talking about the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States. During the campaign, then-Senator Obama was often accused of being “elite” by, among others, a vice-presidential candidate who thought that if elected, her job would be to “run the Senate.”

These folks are apparently not aware that “elite” means “better trained or more talented” – as in the “elite” Captain Sully.

With that in mind, I hope they were absolutely right in calling President Obama “elite.” I hope that he can assemble and lead a team of people selected for their talent and training, rather than for their contributions to the campaign. I hope that he is capable of using all the talent and intellect – and luck – that he can muster.

And I hope we can all pitch in and do our jobs as citizens as well as the heroes of Flight 1549 did.

Copyright ©2009 Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group.

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