Duty and Honor (novel)

Transcription

>>Karen: Okay, I'm not sure a man who's been entertaining a group with stories and keeping these rapt faces out of their laptop needs an introduction. I also don't think the mikes working, so I'm gonna put it down and just talk. How about this? Photo op there we go. >>Sully: Improvise, we can improvise here. >>Karen: This is awesome. So I'm Karen May for those of you I don't know. Oh this is, wow what an introduction. I manage our talent team which is leadership development, learning and development, talent management and so forth. And so what an honor for me to introduce this man I'm so close to. To introduce to you Sully Sullenberger who you may know as a hero and you may think of when you think of the word hero. But you may also think of as a leader, as a man who's an expert, who's responsible, who's creative and who's able to lead a team through a significant crisis to a very good end. Right? Yes, he's standing here, very good end. But I wanted to highlight three other characteristics, leadership characteristics that really matter. The first is he's a curious man. Even after extraordinary success he stays curious. And the second is that he's focused on learning from others. Even people who are quite different from him. And then the third is that he seeks to share that knowledge, to share what he learns. And he actually took this book that he wrote, "Making a Difference", the one he's here to talk to us about as an opportunity to interview people, 11 people that he admires. Leaders that he admires. And to learn from them and then in turn to share what he learned with the world. And he's here today to share that with you, and what an honor for us. So thank you. [Applause] >>Sully: Thank you, thank you so much. >>Karen: I'll just stay here. >>Sully: [Laughs] That was a very nice introduction, thank you I'll try to live up to it. But yeah I have been intellectually curious my whole life. And in the introduction to the second book, "Making a Difference: stories in vision and courage from America's leaders," I talk about why that's the case or why I think that's the case. And one of the reasons is that even before my birth my family valued education. All four of my grandparents and these are people who were born in the 1880s and 1890s, in the 19th century went to college. And that was especially remarkable for women of that era. My mother was a first grade teacher in this small town in Texas where I grew up. A first grade teacher for 25 years, and so from her I got wonderful lifelong gifts of a love of reading and of learning and those have served me well throughout my career. And so I've tried to do what I've encouraged others to do and that's to continue to invest in yourself. Never stop learning, never stop growing either professionally or personally throughout your life. And I think that's become a necessity now because with the pace of change only accelerating I think most people cannot get through an entire working lifetime with just one skill set. We have to keep learning, have to keep growing sometimes reinvent ourselves like I did on January 15, 2009 to learn very quickly a way of living this entirely new life. On January 15, 2009 I had never given a public speech in my life. Never wanted to, I was convinced that wouldn't be good at it. I'd never written a book. I'd been a professional pilot, but I stayed curious. And so I approached these new careers, and I have four of them now to replace the airline career I left after 30 years two years ago. As a speaker, as an author as a consultant to industry and as a CBS news aviation consultant. I approach that with the same discipline and diligence I did in my flying career. And we seem to have lost the speaker in the room or is it just been muted? >>Male #1: I think it's better without it. >>Sully: Is it better without it? >>Male #2: I think we've got a little bit of speaker. >>Sully: Okay, I've got just enough that you can hear me let me know if you can't. So why this book and why now? I think, like the first book, "Highest Duty," my memoir, a lot of this book was already in me. That I had lived my life in a way that had prepared me without knowing it for that event and for all this attention as a public figure and the aftermath. I'd been thoughtful, I grew up in an environment in which ideas were important and in which education was important. And striving for excellence was expected of me. And so when I had these amazing opportunities to travel the world and meet world figures the last three years. And I began to hear these very personal stories, these moving and inspiring stories sometimes funny but all of them really incredible. About people who have changed the world, who have changed the lives of others and done amazing things, I just had to share them, I had to put them on a page. And so that's why. And I intentionally chose a very diverse group of people from a variety of walks of life. Younger and older, men, women, some well know some you've never heard of. But all people that I admire and respect. All people who have certain things in common. One of the things they have in common is that I think they all view the world the same way. They view the world as an opportunity for good. And they're people who are willing to serve a cause greater than themselves, greater than their own immediate needs. They're people who like one of them literally says, they're able to check their ego at the door. They're able to do things for the right reasons. And they're able to lead people. You know I think people deserve to be led, that they want to be led. We may manage things, we may manage money, but we must lead people, and that requires human skills. You know some, especially in really evidence-based domains and I've done a lot of patient safety work too, trying to apply what we've learned over the last century in aviation to medicine. Some in these evidence-based domains like medicine think of these human skills as soft skills as opposed to hard skills or clinical or technical skills. But they're not really soft skills or human skills. And even in medicine, even in an evidence based domain like that these human skills have the potential to save more lives than technical skills do. Because much of what we're seeing in medicine right now is we have like in so many industries islands of excellence in a sea of systemic failures. We have some areas that are doing very well, some that are very safe and some that are not. And so I think these human skills are very important. And now when we as a society are facing huge and intractable and ambiguous and complicated problems that are going to require generations to solve, we need people now more than ever who can feel a sense of civic duty. Who can be willing to share sacrifices. Who can give us a vision of a possible future and help us to get there. And be as Jennifer Granholm says, a former Michigan Governor who I profile in the book, "Who can be more pragmatic and less dogmatic?" So with that in mind, I can, I'll tell you a few stories about some of the people in my profile and why I chose them. And then I'd like to open it up into a wide ranging discussion about what these people mean, what they've done and what we can learn from them and take away as everyday things we can use in our lives. And one of the things I wanted to do in this book is to make it accessible. There are shelves full of leadership books, but many of them are written by or for CEOs or salespeople. But this book is for everybody. Whether you have a big job or a fancy title or not. Everybody can learn to be a leader and everybody can learn to be a better leader than they are currently. The very first profile I do is as Admiral Thad Allen. You may know the name, he's a recently retired coastguard commandant. Just about a contemporary of mine, maybe a year to two older. He spent his whole life serving others, saving lives. And he was the one brought in in the darkest hours of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina to turn it around. It was in chaos, it was uncoordinated. The rescue workers were being beaten up in the press on a daily basis. They were completely demoralized. And so when he finally got to New Orleans he turned to his military aid who happened to be interestingly enough named Katrina. [Laughter] And she said, "Well Admiral, now that we're here what are you going to do?" And he said, "I'm gonna do the first thing that any new commander does, I'm gonna call an all hands meeting." And she said, "Admiral there are 4000 people in this building." And he said, "I want to gather as many of them in one place as you can and I want to talk to them right now." And so on the first floor of this large building they gathered 2500 people. And as he entered the area, he saw faces almost hanging on the floor. And so he stood up on a desk, he grabbed a microphone and then with a very simple message in just a few words he said, "I want you to listen to me I'm going I'm going to give you a direct order. I want you to treat everyone you encounter as if they were a member your immediate family. As if they were your father, your mother, your brother, your sister. And if you do that two things are going to happen. First if you make a mistake you're going err on the side of doing too much not too little. And second if anyone has a problem with what you've done, then their problem is with me and not with you." And he said you could hear a huge collective sigh of relief people actually began to weep because nobody before that had told them that what they were doing was important or why or that their boss was behind them. And in just a few words he had done that. For a very graphic exercise of leadership by his personal example. And he did the same thing again with the BP oil spill in the Gulf and with the response to the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. And that's just one story, one profile and the first chapter of the book. And there are so many that are like that. Robert Reich was here I know and spoke to you last August. I had an extended conversation with him. I've admired him for many years. And my conversation with him in his office over at Berkeley was by far the most intellectually stimulating of them all. It was almost a Socratic dialogue. And we talked about many things. He talked about where he got his inspiration. He's a little bit older than I and in the early 1960s during the civil rights movement one of his close friends, a mentor, a man a little bit older than he is Mickey Schwerner who you may remember was murdered along with two other civil rights workers in Mississippi that led to the story and movie "Mississippi Burning". And when Robert, when Bob learned about this man's death it shocked him to the core. That such evil could exist in our country, in this time. And he made a promise to himself that he would do what he had the inclination to do and what he said was an assumption that he would do, he would assume that he would spend his life in what he calls public service. Now that sounds like an archaic term doesn't it? It's not one commonly hears these days. But this is literally what he means is that he intended to spend his life serving the public. And it wasn't that he was going to go into politics or become a politician or to work in government, his goal was to be a public servant which is what he did. He relates to me another example of his personal leadership. When he first got to the Labor Department as the new labor secretary under President Clinton, he had a meeting with his staff. And he opened it up to questions. A large group of employees in the Labor Department. And someone asked him, "Mr. Secretary, why do we still have time cards? Why do we have to mess with that? What's purpose of that?" And so he canvassed his lieutenants and they decided that there really wasn't a purpose to the time cards. And so he said, "Okay starting next week no more time cards." And people were stunned. But then more suggestions came, and people became more engaged and had other ways to make things better and more productive and more useful. And one of the best ideas that came out of this meeting was to as changes to the economy took place to try to very quickly identify which jobs were likely to go away and never come back. And which jobs in which someone could be quickly retrained to do something else similar. And then to redeploy the forces and the resources to do the most good. So in a sense doing triage. One name that you haven't heard is Sue Sheridan. And through my patient safety work I became familiar with her story through a physician friend of mine. Sue Sheridan is a mother of two from Boise Idaho. And the reason I profile her is because her family endured two awful and preventable medical tragedies. First her son Cal when he was born as many babies do became jaundiced. He wasn't diagnosed, he wasn't tested, he wasn't treated in time and he suffered brain damage. He has cerebral palsy and he requires special care the rest of his life. And not long after that, her husband Pat had a tumor that they were initially told was benign. He had surgery to remove as much of it as could be done. And then when the tumor recurred the surgeons at that time wondered why he wasn't treated for cancer earlier at the time of his first surgery. They kept saying, "Well because we were told it was benign." And after about the third of fourth Doctor or pathologist asked her the same question, why wasn't he treated earlier for cancer? She went down to the records room and checked out his records herself and saw on the original pathology report malignant sarcoma. And so again a systemic breakdown in communication led to a fatality. And as he was dying he made her promise to go kick some ass, to save others from that fate, and to change the world. And so rather than devolve into bitterness, anger and despair as many would feel every right to do she educated herself. She gained allies. She took on the often imperious medical establishment as a mom. And she single-handedly managed to change the care that we give newborns globally. And she now has a new job that I helped her get as a patient safety advocate as part of the World Health Organization. It's amazing what people can do when they choose to. So that's why I wrote the book and for me that's what it's about. It's that each of us can choose to do these things. Each of us can learn to be more fulfilled at work to be better leaders at home, at school or at work. But let's take your questions. We have some mikes that we'll pass through the room and if we all can't hear you clearly that I'll repeat the question. Right over here, yes sir. I remember seeing you before, good to see you again. >>Male #3: Whoops, I am on. Good to see you again, thanks for coming. In terms of making a difference, you went from being an airline pilot getting being ready to retire to becoming an advocate for aviation safety. I'm wondering, you see you've been making good use of this, the bully pulpit. [Microphone Feedback] these are things that we are seeing wrong with the way that airlines are regulated, the ways that pilots and flight crews are being compensated, recognized. Are you starting to see any progress, any response from policymakers and from the airlines to that work? >>Sully: Some. The answer in order is yes from some of the policymakers and pretty much no from the industry. We have in this country a formal lessons learned process through the National Transportation Safety Board. An independent federal agency that investigates major transportation accidents, not just airlines but rail, pipeline, highway and others. As a result of the final report on flight 1549 the final report was issued just about two years ago. Some two dozen recommendations were made to make the system safer, to make this kind of an accident less likely to happen in the future. And let me ask you what you think the result has been. Of those two dozen recommendations made by this independent agency that's charged with making the recommendations but cannot themselves implement them. It's a province of our regulatory agency the FAA to change the rules and the airlines to adopt them. Of the two dozen, how many do you think have been implemented thus far? How many think that half have been raise your hand? How many think five have been? Gosh you guys are a cynical bunch. [Laughter] How many of you think two have been? And how many think one has been? Does anybody think none has been? You're right. [Laughter] You're right thus far none of the recommendations has been implemented. And so to get back to your question right now aviation is ultra-safe but if we're going to keep it at that level and make it better which is what we should be doing because our passengers deserve and expect it. We got to do more work than we're doing right now. Unfortunately just a month after our flight in February 2009 in Buffalo New York there was a crash that claimed 50 lives. The Continental Connection Culkin air 3407. 49 on the airplane and one person on the ground whose house the crash hit. The families of the victims of the Culkin air crash have been ardent and tireless advocates of safety. And they've been very active lobbying legislators on capital here. They've been lobbying the airline industry. And it's largely through their efforts with some help from me and my first officer on my flight Jeff Skiles that we got through the Congress two bills that passed in the fall of 2009 and the summer of 2010 that have required greater experience for pilots especially young pilots in the regional airlines from the unbelievable low minimum level now of 250 hours to be an airline pilot. It's laughably small to at least 1500 hrs. And also to improve the rules that prevent pilot fatigue. But you know what, the airline industry and their lobbyists are fighting as hard as they can tooth and nail. They're spending millions of dollars to fight this, to weaken it, to delay it, to kill it. I've had them personally call me a liar. I've had them fight in every way that they can to say that this isn't necessary, that we really, it's okay the way it is. It's good enough. And of course it isn't. So were fighting entrenched interests who have a big financial stake in the status quo. And I don't see that happening anytime soon. And unfortunately in our society like every other it almost takes a crisis to focus the public attention and political will to get these things done. And as we recede in time from these events and we get back to business as normal and those that we're opposing can say, "Well we haven't killed anybody lately so were doing everything okay." And were saying, "You can't define safety only that way, you have to look proactively at the risks and vindicate them." It's gonna be an ongoing battle. Yes sir. >>Male #4: It seems to me like him NTSB is unusually competent and effective if underpowered whereas the FAA suffers from regulatory capture and terrible inertia and bureaucracy. You can be forgiven if you want to punt on this question because it's political. Why do you think that the in NTSB has that spark whereas the FAA is like many other regulatory agency's not. >>Sully: I think it's twofold. First the NTSB is an independent agency. It's somewhat more insulated from the political process although not completely by any means. And also just a practical matter the rulemaking agency the FAA is the one that's going to impose costs on the operators. It's the one that's going to make the rules that determine how much it costs them to operate in accordance with the new standards. How inconvenient it is for them, and of course they and their lobbyists are fighting anything that's deemed to be either the least bit more costly or the least but more inconvenient for them. And that they view as a regulatory burden quite frankly. And so I think it's just a matter of practicality, it's the rulemaking process where the differences are made. And that's where the cost are gonna be felt. So I think it's not just the FAA, I think that many of the federal agencies have that problem. And I think it's, whether it's in the financial world where we're seeing these kinds of things happening are on Capitol Hill. The influence of money is too great in our society and I'm not going to punt on a political question even though this is not a really political book I don't shy away from answering or addressing an important questions that people care about that affect our lives. And the influence of money is too great in our entire political system. And it's even worse now after that wrongheaded Supreme Court decision in Citizens United that gives corporations the ability to donate to unlimited sums, and super pacs. And it disenfranchises the rest of us because the lobbyists can get the rules written in their favor. And it's not in the favor of the traveling public, it's not the favor of the average Americans it's in favor of specific industries or specific companies. >>Male #4: On a more hopeful note, do you know of any recipes to have more agencies like the NTSB that could perhaps help to regulate the financial industry and some of the other risk areas where it wouldn't suffer from the same political shenanigans? >>Sully: I think having longer terms would help. And having appointees that are more based on competence and not political affiliation. Again I get back to my response to when people have on occasion asked me my political affiliation. And I anticipated very early on, I mean three years plus that that question would eventually he asked. I've been shocked and surprised that it's only been asked twice in 3 1/2 years. But I had a ready answer and it's not a flippant one it's a real answer. When people ask me if I'm a Republican or a Democrat I say I'm an American, and I think as an American and I vote as an American and I wish more of us did that. Yes ma'am back here in the back. >>Female #1: Yes hi. >>Female #2: Wait wait wait. I'm sorry, do we have somebody else first? Should I wait for the mike? >>Female #3: Thank you so much for coming to speak with us. My question for you is about how we can teach the next generation of leadership. You mention in your book that leadership is accessible, it's for all of us. I'm sure that's true for the younger generation. But you talk about your daughters, and I'm just curious if you could share with us how we can teach leadership to that next generation. >>Sully: Through your own personal example, by modeling the behavior you want to see in them. They are not going to listen to what you say as much as what they'll watch what you do. And our daughters and are 19 and 17. And my wife is a wonderful partner and a wonderful mom and I think part of the reason that they turned out the way they are is it's in their DNA. And my daughters are adopted, so they're not biologically related to us directly. But part of who they are is our DNA, but that's only a part of it. My wife has done a great job of being there for them, mentoring them. We read to them from a very early age and cuddled with them even before they could even understand the words. And it was really fun to see them then try to "read" even before they could to their stuffed animals or to their dolls. Or the older one to the younger one, mimicking what we had done with them. So I would say just act around them the way you want them to act in every way. The words you choose, the way you treat shopkeepers or people you pass on the highway. Whatever it is, they will notice what you've done. It's one of the things I say in the book about my time as a captain, and practicing for 22 years of a captain out of my 30 years as an airline pilot. Meeting a new group of people, a new crew every week and trying to quickly take this collection of individuals, some of whom may not even know each other and form a team. So if something bad happens on the first takeoff we can work together effectively and solve the problem. And I say in the book that few interactions with others went unnoticed or were completely without consequence. People notice those things, or as I say about my friend Chris who died of cancer three years ago. And I spoke at his memorial service, Chris was able to live his life in such a way that his values were apparent. He didn't have to tell you what he believed, you could see in his actions and in his attitudes what he believed. That would be it I think. Yes over there. >>Male #5: You mentioned the people you interviewed for this book are people that made you feel inspired. If one day I would write a book like this, you would be one of those people for me. [mike feedback]. >>Sully: Thank you. >>Male #5: My question is there any additional stories that you wanted to put into the book but weren't able to? >>Sully: Oh gosh that's a great question. Fortunately just about everybody I asked to interview said yes. They were very anxious to be a part of this progress, process which was wonderful. Are there stories that I would like to have included that I didn't have time to? Yes absolutely, there was one I touch on briefly. One of the people I really wanted to interview and wasn't able to make our schedules mesh was now the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the former four-star Army general Chief of Staff of the Army Eric Shinseki. He as a young infantry officer in Vietnam, badly wounded, lost part of one foot. Served with distinction throughout his entire career, rose to the highest rank in the Army and is now as Veterans Affairs secretary trying to do his very best to give the best care for our veterans that we can. One thing in particular that really caught my attention about him in terms of his personal moral courage. Early in 2003 before the March invasion of Iraq he was asked to testify before Congress about the numbers of ground troops that would be required to control, to pacify the country after the invasion phase was over. And he testified truthfully, or rightly about the fact that several hundred thousand would be required which was a much larger number than then secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld was publicly stating along with the rest of the administration. And he paid a political and professional price for that and ended up retiring and leaving and not being able to continue. And I think that was just a perfect example of the kind of moral courage I'm talking about, that I admire in many of these people. I would like to have told more of his story and meet him personally and I wasn't able to make our schedules work. >>Female #4: A question about when you actually landed the plane. I imagine there may have been times when, I think you said it was very grueling following the established processes [Inaudible]. But I wonder did you also have to break rules and processes and potentially handle conflict, perhaps with your [Inaudible] about what to do? Was there conflict with the rules and processes [Inaudible] and how did you make the choices that you made? >>Sully: That's a great question, it's a big question and I'll try to distill it down to its essential elements. What happened to us on January 15th 2009 on flight 1549 was extraordinary. It was very rare statistically to have an airliner hit either so many birds or such large birds that it basically disabled it and damaged the engines. It turns out irreparably. Then leading to an engine out emergency landing in water just 208 seconds after we had left, just under 3 1/2 minutes. So that was something, it was a novel and unanticipated event for which we had never specifically trained. So it was very much outside the box. And there wasn't an exact protocol to follow in that case. And so yes it required a great deal of improvisation, it required a great deal of deciding that many of the things that we're taught to do in less dire situations weren't really appropriate in that situation. I'll try to go through a few of them really quickly. The fact that this happened so soon, just 100 seconds after takeoff at such a low altitude, about 2700 feet with so few options over one of the most densely developed populated areas of the planet, Manhattan meant that we had to act very quickly, very decisively to make tough choices, to get them right immediately based upon imperfect and ambiguous information. The big advantage that we had was that unlike some other situations, unlike Air France 447 for example where there was some ambiguity about exactly what was going on, we knew clearly exactly what happened, exactly why and what that entailed for us. There was no doubt about what had happened, so that part of the situation was actually very clear and relatively easy. The difficult part was that the stress levels were so high that they were marginally debilitating. It didn't leave me with the ability to do the math on the altitude and distance quite frankly. So what I did was I relied upon my experience of having flown thousands of flights, 20,000 hours. And I was able to look out the window over my shoulder, look at the nearer runways and say, "No." And be right. Very quickly under those conditions was remarkable because the NTSB as is their charter spent a year and a half thoroughly investigating every aspect of this including computer simulations to determine if theoretically we had enough energy, we had enough altitude speed. You know the one half MB squared part of it, the kinetic energy to make it to a runway, taking into account human reaction time. It turns out we did not by a little bit. And after, remember when you were a kid and they would say don't get into trouble a we'll put it on your permanent record? Well if there is such a thing it's probably having an in NTSB report written about you. Where they literally scrutinize for a year and a half every thought that we had, every syllable we uttered, every choice we made, every action that we took. And to have us be vindicated after that process, I was very happy with it. One of the other things that we did that's not typical is in a less dire emergency it's thought best based upon the data we've had, the studies that have been done for the captain not to fly the airplane but to be the decision-maker and take in the whole situation, be aware of all the predictable parameters. To make a choice announce it and begin directing the first officer to take certain actions, there wasn't time for that. The work load was so intense, the time pressure so extreme that Jeff Stiles my first officer and I never had time to even discuss the situation. We had simply to act, and so it was best that I fly rather than try to direct him because there wasn't time. And so I called for the checklist, I began making a left turn sort of taking actions by memory because there wasn't time to again one of the other protocols we deviated from was rather than wait until a minute plus later over a third of the way through remaining flight time when we finally got to this part of the checklist where we first would start taking remedial actions like turning on the engine ignition, starting the auxiliary power unit to provide a backup source of electrical generation, I took them in the first 2 seconds by memory. But there were several ways that we deviated from the normal course of things just due to the exigencies. And that was critical, had I not done so we couldn't have had as good an outcome. So this whole thing was one series of improvisations after another but done based upon 42 years of flying, 20,000 hours in the air and having a clear understanding of the end state I was going to achieve. And knowing which options were possible and which ones were not by looking out the window and being right. So that's what we did. There was a question up here that we have been neglecting. >>Male #6: I have a short one. What would you suggest that? >>Sully: Hold on a minute >>Male #6: What would you suggest for engineers who are working safety bases? >>Sully: I'm sorry, one more time. >>Male #6: What can you suggest engineers who are working on safety critical systems? >>Sully: A couple of things to do. I would say the engineers who are working on safety critical systems to realize that just as in medicine, just as in aviation, just as in many other critical industries what we have now are human technology systems that must function together seamlessly. And we need to involve the end-users as early as possible in the system design. We need to take advantage of the limitations and the abilities of the technology and of the humans and assign them appropriate roles accordingly. For example in aviation as in many domains technology is great, it affords us wonderful functionality, wonderful displays of information, high levels of integration of electronic connectedness. But the downside of that is that technology for the most part can only do what has been foreseen and programed. It's humans who can innovate. And by the way, my favorite definition of innovation is changing before you're forced to. By regulation, by competition, by circumstance. And so what we did that day was to innovate and the technology helped us to some extent but it was basically hand, manually flying and making choices in terms of our human capabilities. So I would say keep the human factor in mind. Your engineering can be top-rated, first rate, but if you don't take into account sufficiently appropriately the, how humans are going to use it, the fact that humans are going to make mistakes and your systems need to be tolerant of that and to make them as least likely as possible and you can still fail and fail spectacularly if you don't do that. Yes sir. >.Male #7: With that in mind how do you feel about Airbus's programmed flight envelope and how it takes it all away from the pilot. >>Sully: I, the short answer is I prefer Boeing's philosophy which is that when you approach certain limitations it will warn you, the stick may shake or it may make a noise. But if you must go beyond that to avoid hitting the ground, to avoid a collision, it's possible to do so. People have asked me if we would've had a similar outcome in a Boeing airplane that day and my answer is I think we would have as long as it was the general geometric layout was similar, in the airplanes shape and size were similar we would've had a similar outcome. The Airbus I was flying was a fly by wire airplane in which there is no longer a direct mechanical connection between the flight controls in the cockpit, and the flight control circuits in the wings and tail. Instead there are flight control computers that interpret and mediate the pilots inputs and then send electrical impulses to actuators that move the control surfaces. The flight envelope protections that the Airbus fly by wire system affords us we didn't need because we never got to the maximums at which it would have essentially protected us from seeing certain limitations. And in one important way it hindered us and this has not been well told, well known. We look at the digital flight data recorder that has all kinds of streams of data, all the flight control positions, altitude, airspeed, acceleration etc. And in the last 4 seconds of flight, that's right before we touched down I was not yet achieving the maximum lift from the wings. I was commanding for more, pulling back full aft on the stick and the flight control computers prevented me from getting more lift therefore we hit harder than we would have, there was more damage underneath, more water came in sooner. One structural piece of metal was driven up through the back floor which cut Doreen Welsh, the flight attendants, leg. So that was not the way we were trained it would work. It turns out there's a little-known software feature known only then to a few Airbus software engineers, and to no pilots to no airlines that was the case. It's called a phugoid mode. And it was not the way we were trained the airplane should work, apparently it is the way the airplane does work. But that was not apparent to us and so in that sense it actually hurt us. >>Male #5: Was it in direct law? >>Sully: No, he's asking if we were in direct law. And there are three categories of sophistication that are possible in the Airbus flight control system. The highest level, the normal level is called normal law in which everything is working and all these flight protections are intact. It prevents you from going too fast or too slow, or too high or too low, too much bank too much acceleration in terms of G. In alternate law you have some of those protections but not all of them. That's a degraded mode but the flight control protections are still somewhat active. In direct law none of the flight control protections is active, it's possible to aerodynamically stall the wing, it won't prevent you from doing that and it flies more like a more conventional airplane. Now we stayed in normal law the entire time because in the first 2 seconds I started our airplanes auxiliary power unit and by the time the left engine ripped up, the speed, RPMs decayed below the point at which the left generator could continue power on electrical buses the APU generator was online. So we remained in normal law and all those protections were intact. >>Male #7: We don't care about Republican or Democrat, we just Airbus versus Boeing. [Laughter] >>Sully: Okay. Alright let's see who else, there must be some others. Yes sir, right here. >>Male #8: So you have mentioned about the increasing flight time requirements from 250 hours to 1500 hours. >>Sully: Yes. >>Male #8: So what kind of advice would you give to younger pilots to get through that grind? Those who dream of being an airline pilot. >>Sully: How do you get from 200, if you want to be a pilot at you get from 250 hours to 1500 hours? Well that's, I think you'll do the same thing that we've always done and if you don't go through the military which there are fewer options now. And even if you decide to go that route you owe the military more years to make up the 12 now versus the five or six it used to be, you'll have to do something else. But there are jobs out there and I think in one way there probably are a few better situations. It used to be that you would go to one type of an operation to fly and maybe via flight instructor and small single engine propeller flights for a while. And you would change companies and go somewhere else to fly as copilot in a turboprop doing charters. And then eventually you could fly a Lear jet someplace else. Now there are a few more operations where it's more vertically integrated and you'll have more options to progress within that same company. But it's a difficult thing to do, you're right. But there are options in spite of what the regional Airlines Association lobbyists say there are options besides just flying banner tows along the beach or being a flight instructor in small single engine airplanes. But it's always been hard, and it's no easier now but does it really matter? I mean would you want to put your kids on a regional jet where the first officer has 250 hours I wouldn't. I mean it doesn't matter how hard it is it's what's required. Yes. >>Male #9: Do you think a less experienced pilot would've had a prayer? >>Sully: I think it would've been much harder. I think in every way whether it had been night, whether it had still been snowing, whether we were little bit further from the river is. If any of those things had changed it would've been much harder and had I had with me, well I'm assuming you're talking about both pilots. Had the captain been less experienced it might not have been as hardwired in his or her brain a way of synthesizing a lifetime of experience and training to come up with a way to solve this new problem you've never seen before in 208 seconds. Had I had a less experienced first officer, I still wouldn't have had time to direct them. So it would've meant that I would've had to do more things myself which I probably really couldn't have done. Because I was maxed out. And I wouldn't have had as much help because Jeff Stiles had also been a captain before on a 737 before all the cutbacks had forced him back into the right seat to be a first officer again. He also had 20,000 hours of flying time like I did. And so he intuitively and immediately grasped the situation as it built as I did. I didn't have to tell him what was going on, he saw it and he knew it. He was able to listen to my conversation with the air traffic controller on the radio and infer my intent. He knew intuitively and immediately to shift his priorities on his own initiative, I didn't have a chance to tell him later in the flight to stop trying to regain usable thrust, using the checklist with what turned out to be these irreparably damaged engines and instead by calling out airspeed and altitude to me he help me judge that final critical maneuver at the height above the river. Judging it visually at which I began raising the nose to start to land. If I'd waited too long, we have hit too hard, wouldn't have gotten the nose up enough. If I began to raise the nose too soon we go to slow and drop and hit too hard. So he had to call out the airspeed and altitude to me to help me judge that critical height. So had either one of us been not as experienced we could not have had as good an outcome. Everything, every part of it would've been harder that's why, we make it look so easy being an airline pilot because so much goes so right so much of the time. But at any given moment you have to be able to handle whatever the cosmos throws at you even if it's never been thought of before. And get it right the first time. That's our job and that's why experience matters. Are we out of time? >>Male # 11: We're out of time, so a big round of applause. [Applause] >>Sully: thank you, thank you.