And here is a repost of a review I wrote on September 22, 2016. It appears here as/is.
How many times have you gotten on an airplane, tuned out the flight attendants’ safety briefing, and just took it for granted that you would make it safely to your destination? I’m sure I’ve done it more than once in my lifetime. I’m sure that many of the people who boarded US Airways’ Flight 1549 from New York to Charlotte on January 15th, 2009 also took it for granted that they would be taking a run of the mill flight. There were 155 passengers and crew on that airplane that day. How many of them had been lulled into a state of complacency? How many of them are still complacent seven years after their flight landed in the Hudson River, just minutes after take off?
Like a lot of people, I very well remember reading and hearing about Flight 1549 and its pilot, Chesley B. Sullenberger, affectionately nicknamed Sully, who managed to ditch the aircraft in the river after its engines were overcome by a flock of Canadian geese. This year, the film Sully is being released, with Tom Hanks playing the title role. I suppose it was the buzz about Sully that made me decide to download 2009’s Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters. Written by Chesley B. Sullenberger and ghost writer Jeffrey Zaslow, Highest Duty is basically Sully’s life story in book form. But it’s also the story of what happened on that fateful day in January, when all of Sully’s years of flying and thousands of hours of training came down to one moment when he and his co-pilot, Jeff Skiles, had 155 lives in their hands.
Highest Duty begins at the very beginning, as Sullenberger describes growing up in Texas and being fascinated by flight. He found early inspiration and training in a local crop duster, who taught him the basics of flight and rented him the use of his plane and air strip. Later, he went on to attend the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he was trained to fly bigger airplanes, skills he used as an Air Force officer. I got a kick out of reading about Sully’s training, especially since it turns out he and my dad were stationed in England during the same time. Sully was at Lakenheath Air Force Base and my dad was at Mildenhall Air Force Base; the two are very close to each other. Of course, Sully is a lot younger than my dad, so they were not running in the same circles.
After leaving the Air Force, Sully began his career as a commercial pilot. He writes about how difficult it was, even back before commercial airlines had to contend with the challenges they face today. There were more pilots than open positions and everything an airline does is based on seniority. Sully just happened to be at the right place at the right time when he scored his first job.
Like many people, Captain Sullenberger fell in love and got married. His wife, Lorrie, has been along for the ride, coping with Sully’s many trips away from home. They have two adopted daughters, Kate and Kelly, and live near San Francisco, California, which is where Sully’s first job was based. As airlines began disappearing, swallowed by bankruptcies or mergers, Sully’s “home base” changed. In 2009, he was based out of Charlotte, North Carolina, but still commuted from California.
As he made his way to that fateful flight out of New York, Sully worried about his finances. I’m sure he never dreamed that he’d one day write books… or be the subject of a major motion picture with Tom Hanks playing him in the starring role. No… on January 15th, 2009, Sully was thinking about his looming mandatory retirement and the property he owned that had been leased by a Jiffy Lube franchiser. The franchiser had decided not to renew the lease and Sully wondered how he would pay the mortgage. Sully’s pension had dwindled down to being worth a fraction of what it once was. And he lived in a very expensive part of the country. It’s a feeling many readers will be able to relate to, even before he gets to the story about his historic landing in the Hudson River.
Those who do decide to read this book may want to know that it’s not all about that flight. In fact, readers are “teased” throughout the book as he mentions the event that put him in the public eye, but writes more about what led up to that moment. Some readers may find that technique a little tedious and frustrating. I know I picked up Sully’s book because I wanted to read about how he ditched the airplane in the river, but I now appreciate reading about how Sullenberger became the man and the pilot he is. Aside from that, he has spent so many years in the airline business that he offers some interesting trivia about it. In fact, he even laments how sad he thinks it is that so few children are interested in seeing the cockpit anymore. Nowadays, kids are plugged into any number of devices. It doesn’t occur to them to want to stop in and see where Sully works. He mentions that a lot of people seem to think pilots are not much better than glorified bus drivers.
Anyway… I pretty much hate flying in airplanes and try to avoid them when I can. But I can definitely appreciate a book about how the airline industry works, especially when it’s written by a man who could be credited with keeping so many people safe when they could have been so easily killed. Think about it. It’s a miracle that 155 people were able to go home to their families after Sully ditched their airplane in an ice cold river. Through his talented ghost writer, Sully even describes how it felt to receive his personal effects months later, after they were found by the company contracted to take care of that. He muses that most people who receive personal personal effects after a plane crash are the people who have survived the crash victims. But there he was, receiving a box of his stuff that happened to be on the plane. Everything was there, save for an $8 tuna sandwich he purchased and never had the chance to eat. And he was the one to take possession of that stuff, not his wife and children. It’s amazing.
I think Highest Duty is well worth reading. I give it a solid four stars.
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