Forty-Two Years for Two Hundred Eight Seconds

On January 15, 2009, Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger had been flying for forty-two years. He started in a Cessna 172 at age sixteen, flew F-4 Phantoms for the United States Air Force, and logged over nineteen thousand hours in the cockpit. He studied aviation safety for decades, even investigating accidents to understand what went wrong and why.

Then came two hundred eight seconds that demanded every bit of it.

Three minutes after US Airways Flight 1549 lifted off from LaGuardia Airport, a flock of Canada geese struck both engines of the Airbus A320. At twenty-eight hundred feet over the Bronx, with 155 souls aboard and no thrust, Sullenberger told air traffic control five words: "We're gonna be in the Hudson." While First Officer Jeffrey Skiles worked frantically through the engine restart checklist, Sullenberger guided the powerless aircraft to a water landing near Forty-Second Street in Manhattan. Everyone survived.

Reporters called it a miracle. Sullenberger called it a lifetime of preparation meeting one terrible moment.