Remember all the excitement over hero pilot Sully's "return" to flying back in October? At the time we wrote that Sully's first flight back would be one of his last. Clearly, he wasn't going back to his old routine of flying for a living.
Well, today Sully made it official: he's retiring. The news has already unleashed another slew of fulsome tributes to the hero pilot who saved the plane and the lives of all 155 aboard USAirways flight 1549. Oh, by the way, the announcement today also noted that a flight attendant aboard that plane is also retiring. The attendant, Doreen Welsh, was seriously injured in the crash, a fact that drew scant attention in all the fuss that followed last year.
Anyone could have foreseen that Sully wouldn't stick around the crew lounge for long. Ever since the crash on Jan. 15, 2009, Sully and his first officer on that flight, Jeff Skiles, have spoken out about the plight of commercial airline pilots--in the industry in general, and at their airline in particular. In the years following 9/11, their pay and pensions had been slashed and both of them had been working at second jobs before the Hudson river 'miracle' rescued them from obscurity.
Sully has since made millions from the sale of his book and his speeches (he charges around $90,000 a pop) so he doesn't need the job anymore. (Officially, he says he'll continue to work on aviation safety matters as a consultant.) Skiles is now an executive at the Coalition of Airline Pilots Association, where he spends at least 50 percent of his time, but you may yet hear his voice over the intercom-- he still flies the Airbus A320 as a first officer a couple of times a month.
Sully and Skiles are not alone in their disenchantment with their profession--worse, they say, is that the career of a commercial airline pilot is now seen as so undesirable that they wonder where the next generation will come from. Sully's path from the Air Force to USAirways was once standard--now it's almost unheard of, as few military pilots make the jump to civilian flying anymore.
So... guess that means one legacy of flight 1549 is to remove two more highly experienced and skilled pilots from the full-time workforce.
Well, today Sully made it official: he's retiring. The news has already unleashed another slew of fulsome tributes to the hero pilot who saved the plane and the lives of all 155 aboard USAirways flight 1549. Oh, by the way, the announcement today also noted that a flight attendant aboard that plane is also retiring. The attendant, Doreen Welsh, was seriously injured in the crash, a fact that drew scant attention in all the fuss that followed last year.
Anyone could have foreseen that Sully wouldn't stick around the crew lounge for long. Ever since the crash on Jan. 15, 2009, Sully and his first officer on that flight, Jeff Skiles, have spoken out about the plight of commercial airline pilots--in the industry in general, and at their airline in particular. In the years following 9/11, their pay and pensions had been slashed and both of them had been working at second jobs before the Hudson river 'miracle' rescued them from obscurity.
Sully has since made millions from the sale of his book and his speeches (he charges around $90,000 a pop) so he doesn't need the job anymore. (Officially, he says he'll continue to work on aviation safety matters as a consultant.) Skiles is now an executive at the Coalition of Airline Pilots Association, where he spends at least 50 percent of his time, but you may yet hear his voice over the intercom-- he still flies the Airbus A320 as a first officer a couple of times a month.
Sully and Skiles are not alone in their disenchantment with their profession--worse, they say, is that the career of a commercial airline pilot is now seen as so undesirable that they wonder where the next generation will come from. Sully's path from the Air Force to USAirways was once standard--now it's almost unheard of, as few military pilots make the jump to civilian flying anymore.
So... guess that means one legacy of flight 1549 is to remove two more highly experienced and skilled pilots from the full-time workforce.
