Local Danville California Resident, Sully Sullenberger, Considered a Hero

Sully Sullenberger, didn't wake up Thursday planning on being a hero. Like many of us, Sully would be be more than happy to just be a hero to his daughters and wife, Lorrie Sullenberger of Fit & Fabulous Outdoors.

I met with Sully and Lorrie over a year ago when they were both looking for advice on how to upgrade their Internet presences. Lorrie contracted the services of my son, Devon, to help her with her site design and implementation. She gave him rave reviews for his work.

During that first meeting a year ago, Sully and I talked airlines. He is with U.S. Airways. I'm retired from Delta Airlines. One of the items we discussed was how some of the airlines had used bankruptcy to void pension plans. There was an article in one of the business publications at the time U.S. Airways was reneging on its retirement plans. The article, as I recall, quoted one of the top execs at U.S. Airways as saying continuing to fund the pension plan was not a good business decision and they should use the bankruptcy process to void the plan – a simple cold-blooded business strategy.

I wonder – if U.S. Airways had not backed out of the pension plan – would Sully have retired and not been on U.S. Airways flight 1549 on Thursday morning? 159 passengers and crew may owe their lives to that pension-voiding decision.

Sully and I spoke about something else near and dear to him – safety. Besides being a pilot and a hero, he is also a safety consultant.

Sully will be the first to tell you, he did not save the day single-handedly. His co-pilot, the tower staff, the ferry boats, the flight attendants – even the passengers – would be on his list of those who helped to save the day. 

The whole incident reminds me of Al Haynes and United flight 232 in 1989. 

Sully has a Facebook fan club now. I have a feeling that Sully's web site is going to be seeing a lot of traffic for the next week or so and that he may be in high-demand as a safety consultant. Maybe, he'll finally be able to retire from the airlines.