Captain Sullenberger's crowded minute

Theodore Roosevelt referred to his leading the Rough Riders up Kettle Hill in Cuba as his "crowded hour." Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot of that US Air plane yesterday, shone through his crowded minutes as he landed that plane full of passengers safely on the Hudson River. Not only the passengers on that plane, but the people of New York whose lives were unknowingly endangered by the chance of a plane landing on top of some crowded New York streets.

While it is amazing to think that in this modern age, a jet can be taken down by a flock of geese, it is also comforting to realize that the man piloting the plane seemed almost perfectly trained for those few minutes.

Fortunately for the 150 passengers aboard Flight 1549, Captain Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III also happens to be one of the aviation community's foremost safety experts - and he's a certified glider pilot.

Sullenberger, 57, has four decades of flight experience under his belt, including a stint as an Air Force fighter pilot.

Aside from flying military fighters and commercial jets for US Airways, Sullenberger is a respected authority on safety matters who has been a consultant to NASA and the National Transportation Safety Board, and is even credited with identifying flawed Federal Aviation Administration procedures.

He also runs a company, Safety Reliability Methods Inc., that helps apply the safety techniques he's perfected to other industries.

According to the Web site of his company, Sullenberger was "instrumental in the development and implementation of the Crew Resource Management course used at his airline, and has taught the course to hundreds of his colleagues."

And the maneuvers he used to land the jet - which turned into a giant glider when birds destroyed both its engines - proved he knew his stuff.

....A 1973 graduate of the Air Force Academy, Sullenberger flew Air Force F-4s and served as a training officer in Europe and the Pacific.

The New York Post calls him a "superhero pilot." But that does him a disservice. He is an ordinary man who has worked hard to acquire the very skills that he had to call on yesterday. He is indeed a hero, but not because of superman-type skills, but because he has apparently worked all his lives to perfect his own and other pilots' skills in doing what they do safely day after day. And to be ready for the crowded minutes when they have to call on all the abilities he had worked a lifetime to perfect. What a blessing that a man of such skill should have been piloting that plane yesterday.