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Is the age of the ageing Captain over?

Caroline Blatter

Article By Captain Iain Flockhart 

Throughout my career I have pondered the probability of age becoming a hurdle as I got older....

Just over ten years ago on the 15th of January 2009, Captain Chesley B Sullenberger safely landed his airplane (US 1549) on the bitterly cold 2ºC, Hudson river in New York. Every single person (155) survived the incident. There were 5 quite serious injuries but the rest of the passengers and crew were mostly unscathed apart from the odd bump or bruise.

208 seconds after the bird strike, the US Airways Airbus A 320 was on the Hudson river. It did not “Crash” but was a truly successful Controlled Ditching. Sully and his First Officer Jeff Skiles who was actually flying the plane until Sully took over post bird strike, (equally worthy of credit for his part in the event), were following procedures for a dual engine failure that were written to deal with this specific failure at full cruising altitude rather than the very low altitude of 859m that US 1594 had reached before it lost power to both engines. This therefore gave the pilot and his FO very little time to figure out what to do.

Sully will probably go down in history as the man that executed the most perfect example of recovering from what would otherwise have resulted in a catastrophic accident with total loss of life.

An extraordinary feat for any pilot to have performed. A true modern day legend. 

Just as Sully did, (as a matter of necessity for him on that day), lets now move from those in the air towards the water.

Continue reading this article over on

Iain Flockhart's LinkedIn page.