We’re awash in heroes these days. It’s not like ancient times, when you had to be the child of a human and a god in order to qualify. Parents are heroes. Movie stars are heroes. Even criminals, in a Byronesque, anti-hero kind of way. Think Tony Soprano, or, more recently, Johnny Depp as bank robber John Dillinger.

Everyone has his own idea of heroism. In that way, heroism has something in common with pornography. To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, “We know it when we see it.”

In July, I wrote about some bona fide American heroes: John Adams, Oliver Hazard Perry, and Theodore Roosevelt. I didn’t write about quarterback Steve McNair, although he was with me through a lot of my thinking about heroism. After Mr. McNair’s murder, some called him a hero, and it bugged me.

I respected Mr. McNair as an athlete. I envied the Tennessee Titans for having such an indestructible quarterback. I cheered him as a Baltimore Raven. I was impressed by his stamina, his ability to absorb punishment on the field, even his kooky post-touchdown cow horn gesture.

When the sordid details of his murder were revealed, I thought to myself, “Here’s a man who lived in the land of ‘Yes;’ ultimately, it did him in.”

I don’t have any illusions about millionaire football players. They’re subject to unimaginable temptations, and all too often, they succumb. They get a free pass for behavior that would land most of us in jail. Their job description includes hitting other people as hard as they can.

I certainly wouldn’t hold them up as exemplars to my eleven-year-old.

Athleticism is impressive. But heroic?

I started reading blogs about Mr. McNair. People really poured their hearts out in these blogs. They saw in him a man who, through talent and hard work, had transcended his humble beginnings. The trappings of success–the flashy lifestyle, the four sons by three different woman, the mistress less than half his age—were just distractions from the bigger story.

I suppose I saw their point. But it still bugged me to hear him called a “hero.”

I have a counterproposal for the McNairites; a man in the news earlier this year, a pilot with a cartoonish name, Captain Chesley Burnett “Sully” Sullenberger, III. Captain Sullenberger was the fellow who safely ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River.

Everything about that ditching fascinated me. A few years ago, when I was learning how to fly a single-engine plane, I started listening to the conversations between pilots and air traffic controllers. Talking to air traffic control is one of the more intimidating aspects of flying, particularly in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., where a communications or navigation error can get you intercepted by F-16s. Listening to experienced pilots is a great way to learn what to say over the radio, and when.

Even today, reading the transcripts of Captain Sullenberger’s conversation with air traffic control gives me goosebumps. They’re marvels of concision.

Flight 1549’s take-off is uneventful. The plane departs LaGuardia Airport under favorable conditions. At 3:25PM, Flight 1549 calls air traffic control (ATC) to report that they’ve reached 700 feet on their way to 5000 feet. ATC answers that radar contact has been established, and instructs Flight 1549 to climb and maintain 15,000 feet. At 3:26PM, Captain Sullenberger takes a moment to admire the view of the Hudson. His First Officer, Jeffrey Skiles, agrees.

So far, so good.

Then, at 3:27PM, disaster. Flight 1549 encounters a flock of migrating Canada geese. Birds are sucked into both engines of the Airbus A320. A shocking silence fills the cockpit.

The jet now has zero thrust. It can function as a glider, but its range is only a few miles at such a low altitude. As the co-pilot works to restart the engines, Captain Sullenberger does what any pilot is trained to do in the event of a catastrophic “engine out:” first, find the best place to land. He contacts ATC. He says, “Mayday, mayday, mayday.” Then he says, “Ah, this is, uh, Cactus 1549, hit birds, we lost thrust in both engines, we’re turning back towards LaGuardia.”

The cockpit is quiet and tense as the crew prepares for an emergency landing. Things are just as tense in the windowless rooms of ATC. Unnecessary radio chatter is silenced. Departures are halted. All resources are focused on giving Flight 1549 the best chance to return to LaGuardia.

Twenty-nine seconds after their emergency announcement, Flight 1549 is offered Runway One Three for landing, but Captain Sullenberger declines. His experience tells him that the Airbus won’t make the altitude-gobbling turn back to LaGuardia.

He asks ATC instead to clear a runway at Tetorboro Airport in New Jersey, which is off to his right. Within fifteen seconds, ATC has secured Runway One at Teterboro for him.

But it’s already too late. At 3:29PM, Captain Sullenberger says, “We can’t do it.” Followed three seconds later by, “We’re gonna be in the Hudson.”

It’s Flight 1549’s final radio contact.

In the interviews that followed, Captain Sullenberger described those frantic minutes before ditching as “the worst sickening, pit-of-your-stomach, falling-through-the-floor feeling” he’d ever experienced. He talked about the way his 19,000 hours of flight experience and his work as an instructor and safety consultant helped him overcome the terrifying silence of the dead engines. He said, “One way of looking at this might be that for 42 years, I’ve been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience: education and training. And on January 15, the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal.”

Thanks largely to his presence of mind and his skill as a pilot, all 155 people aboard Flight 1549 survived.

This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 06 August 2009

For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com