Sullenberger became a national hero on that cold Tuesday when US Airways Flight 1549, bound for Charlotte, N.C., lost power to both of its engines after it crossed paths with the geese shortly after taking off from New York’s La Guardia International Airport.
Sullenberger, who quickly became affectionately known as “Sulley,” coolly guided the stricken plane to a relatively gentle ditching in the river near the USS Intrepid Museum. No one was killed or even seriously injured.
As Langewiesche tells it, the plane was the hero and was pretty much flying itself because it is controlled by computers.
Langewiesche wonders in print what Sullenberger was thinking as the crippled airliner descended, and then writes …
"But it doesn’t really matter what Sullenberger thought, because fly-by-wire in the Airbus cannot be overpowered, and it can be switched off only by pulling circuit breakers, which no fool would have done. … Sullenberger’s A320 went all the way to the water under fly-by-wire control."
From small misconceptions do great blunders flow.
Fly-by-wire refers to the connection between the cockpit controls and the rest of the plane. The aircraft uses a computer network, with specialized computers at each end, to relay commands. The system replaces the braided cables and pulleys that controlled earlier aircraft.
The fly-by-wire system will run as long as there is electric power available. No need to pull circuit breakers if the engines go dead. The system was on because Sullenberger had the presence of mind to switch on the APU (auxiliary power unit), a safety system not powered by the engines, to make sure he could still control the plane.
WATCH: Fly along as US Airways Flight 1549 is recreated in a detailed video simulation
There’s nothing mysterious about fly-by-wire technology. Some automobiles, for example, use it (the industry calls it "drive by wire") to link the gas pedal to the engine throttle. There is no cable, just a computer connection between sensors.
If Langewiesche had instead written of cars and said that the linkage between the steering wheel, brakes and gas pedal could not be easily disengaged from the wheels and the engine, he would be correct. But it does not follow that the car will override the commands of the driver. A car's systems will continue to function: The brakes will prevent skids, the fuel system will continue to deliver the appropriate mix of gas to the engine ... but you can still park the car or drive the machine into a ditch at any speed and direction you choose.
That said, some fly-by-wire systems are actually in greater control of the plane. The B-2 "flying wing" bomber is onesuch. The plane's design is inherently unstable and requires so much attention from the pilot that it is all but impossible to fly the thing manually.
Not so with a commercial airliner. When Sullenberger steered his Airbus A320-214 toward the Hudson, the fly-by-wire system complied, as it should have. When the pilot set the flaps at a precise angle to raise the nose and skim the surface of the river with the tail of the plane, and then abruptly readjusted to cut forward momentum and allow the craft to settle, a fully-in-command fly-by-wire system would never have allowed such a thing.
The plane was not flying itself and was not about to execute, on its own, a landing that would have been anything but catastrophic.
Remember, what was going on during those fateful six minutes was enormously dangerous and so far outside the procedure envelope that there was not even simulator training for such an event. The engines were dead. The landing gear was up. The wings were stalling. The fuel-heavy plane was not responding to normal corrective adjustments and the speed was way too low for a proper runway landing. The ground proximity radar should have been howling alarms and commanding the fly-by-wire system take steps to avoid impending disaster. None of that happened because Sullenberger was doing the flying.
Langewiesche's 193-page story is well spun, even insightful, as he discusses the changing nature of commercial aviation. It comes across as erudite, but I agree with Sullenberger when he says that the author is wrong about this.
As for Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, I'd fly through Hell in a box kite with that fellow.
Michael W. Dominowski is the editor of Perspective, the Staten Island Advance's Sunday editorial section.