Er stond een aardig intervieuw met Sullenberger in Air and Space Magazine.
Over enkele topics die in de pers en aviation forums 'have been beating to death' geeft "Sully" gerichte antwoorden.

Hier zijn er een paar.

Air & Space: What is the role of the first officer in that situation?

Sullenberger: This was not a typical case. Because of the extraordinarily difficult nature of the situation and because of the extreme time pressure, we both had to take on different roles than what typically would be done according to protocol. Most of the training that we get is for a situation where you have more time to deal with things. You have time to be more thoughtful, to analyze the situation. Typically what’s done these days is for the first officer to be the pilot flying and for the captain to be the pilot monitoring, analyzing and managing the situation. There wasn’t time for that.

I felt that even though Jeff was very experienced-he turns out to have had as much total flying experience as I do-and even though he’d been a captain before on another airplane at my airline and had been at the company 23 years, he was relatively new on this particular aircraft type . In fact, this was his first trip after having completed training on it. He’d been through the simulator and the ground school and had been on a four-day trip with an instructor, but this was his first trip to fly. So I decided early on that we were best served by me using my greater experience in the to fly the airplane.

Additionally, I felt like I had a clear view out the left-hand and forward windows of all the important landmarks that I needed to consider. They were on my side. They would be easier for me to see. And ultimately the choice of where we would go and what flight path we would take would be mine.

I also thought that since it had been almost a year since I had been through our annual pilot recurrent training, and Jeff had just completed it-he had just been in the simulator using all the emergency checklists-he was probably better suited to quickly knowing exactly which checklist would be most appropriate, and quickly finding it in this big mutlipage quick reference handbook that we carry in the cockpit. So I felt it was like the best of both worlds. I could use my experience, I could look out the window and make a decision about where we were going to go, while he was continuing his effort to restart the engines and hoping that we wouldn’t have to land some place other than a runway. He was valiantly trying until the last moment to get the engines started again.

Air & Space: Did you flash back on any of your experiences as a glider pilot? Did it feel natural to you?

Sullenberger: Actually not very much after the bird strike felt very natural, but the glide was comfortable. Once we had established our plan, once we knew our only viable option was to land in the river, we knew we could make the landing. But a lot of things yet had to go right.

I get asked that question about my gliding experience a lot, but that was so long ago, and those are so different from a modern jet airliner, I think the transfer was not large. There are more recent experiences I’ve had that played a greater role.

Air & Space: Did the airplane have a ditch button that would have sealed certain openings in the cabin?

Sullenberger: Yes, it’s called a ditching push button. And there was not time. We never got to the ditching push button on the checklist. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The vents that are normally open are small. And once the airplane touched the water, the contact opened holes in the bottom of the airplane much, much larger than all of the vents that this ditching push button was designed to close.

I cannot conceive of any ditching or water landing where it would help. Theoretically I understand why the engineers included it. It sounded like a good idea, but not in practice. We had a successful water landing, and even then, from seeing pictures of being removed from the river by a crane, there were much larger holes than the vents this button was designed to close.

Het intervieuw staat hier, http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/Sullys-Tale.html

Cheers
Art