Captain Sully has Alzheimer’s.
Yes, that Captain Sully.
The guy who ditched US Airways Flight 1549 into the freezing Hudson River back on January 15,2009. Everyone made it out. A double bird strike killed both engines. He didn’t.
He’s called it “early stage.”
For now it’s small stuff. Forgetting a name he should know. Telling the same story twice. Sleeping badly. It is the start of a long road.
‘We Will Be Courageous together’
He’s done being private about things like this. He plans to talk loud. To fight the disease with the same grit he showed over that river. He wants to draw people in. Make them understand.
Before he flew for US Airways for thirty years he was just a pilot. After 2010 he hung up the uniform. Tom Hanks played him in a movie that was okay mostly because of the actual flying.
Wait. Did you know this?
Five things you probably forgot about that day:
- The flight crew thought they landed on a runway. They opened the doors. Water rushed in. Then they knew.
- Every passenger on that flight got top-tier elite status for a year free. Just like that.
- The US Airways CEO Doug Parker went to New York. He left his briefcase in a garage. HQ got evacuated thinking it was a bomb. It was just his bag.
- Parker had a meeting with American Express that morning. Amex wanted to increase their credit holdback. That extra fee could have bankrupted the airline right then and there. Parker got called away before the message landed. Irony is heavy.
- Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas made a cocktail for it. They called it the Miracle on the Hudson. It was blue. Hudson water isn’t blue. I was confused.
President Biden picked him as the U.S. representative to the ICAO. Ambassador rank. Senate confirmed him. He did good work.
Now the work is internal.
The brain is the cockpit now. And the weather is turning.
