Yesterday afternoon most of us watched as the events unfolded on the Hudson River in New York, when U.S. Airways Flight 1549 made a miraculous crash landing in the river. With 155 passengers and crew on board, the nation is still in shock that everyone is safe and accounted for. With the exception of a few minor injuries and cases of hypothermia, this was a text book emergency landing, except it wasn’t a landing so much as a hydro-glide of tremendous skill and bravery.

Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger has been hailed a hero for his ability to not only remain calm under pressure, but also for his extraordinary aviation abilities which allowed him to safely land an enormous piece of flying metal with the entire vessel in tact.

Here’s more on Captain Sullenberger from CNN:

All 155 passengers and crew aboard Flight 1549 survived.

The 57-year-old former Air Force fighter pilot has been flying for more than 40 years, and has been with US Airways since 1980.

His two-page resume is packed with achievements and highlights his broad aviation experience.

The pilot speaks internationally on airline safety, and collaborates with the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California-Berkeley, whose researchers look for ways to avoid air disasters.

Sullenberger was primed to help passengers aboard the Airbus A320 survive the crisis, said Karlene Roberts, a university professor who co-directs the center.

“I can imagine him being sufficiently in charge to get those people out,” she said. “He’s got that kind of personality, which is to his credit.”

Sullenberger is president and CEO of Safety Reliability Methods Inc., a company he founded. The firm provides emergency management, safety strategies and performance monitoring to the aviation industry.

He was an instructor and Air Line Pilots Association safety chairman, accident investigator and national technical committee member, according to a biography on the Web site of his company.

He participated in several U.S. Air Force and National Transportation Safety Board accident investigations, and worked with NASA scientists on a paper on error and aviation, according to his resume.

He was widely praised after Thursday’s forced water landing, apparently caused by a “double bird strike,” which crippled the plane’s engines.

“It was an amazing piece of airmanship,” said Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board.”

Even New York’s mayor had praise.

“It would appear that the pilot did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river and then making sure that everybody got out,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference Thursday.

“I had a long conversation with the pilot. He walked the plane twice after everybody else was off and tried to verify that there was nobody else on board — and assures us there was not.”

Sullenberger’s wife, Lorrie, told the New York Post on Thursday that her husband is the “consummate pilot.”

“He is about performing that airplane to the exact precision to which it is made,” she told the paper.

“I’ve said for a long time that he’s a pilot’s pilot. He loves the art of the airplane,” she said standing with the couple’s two daughters outside their Danville, California, home on Friday.

His wife forgot to mention her husband kicks serious ass, surely an oversight on her part. Passengers on board have described the landing as amazingly smooth, like “hitting a wake in a boat” and said everyone was calm and the deboarding into the frigid water was orderly and basically with incident.

How hot is Captain “Sully” for staying with his ship and making sure EVERYONE was off before leaving the sinking vessel? Yeah, way hotter than Brad Pitt and almost as hot as Viggo Mortenson.

Honestly, I am one of those white knuckled fliers who no one should sit next to during a flight. I pray to the heavens while quietly losing my crap until we land safely. Even writing about it is causing me anxiety, so let’s move on.

It’s been a while since we’ve nominated anyone for the “Fresh Dose Of Hotness” award and Captain Sullenberger wins hands down.

Thank you for excelling at your job dude. And major props for all those ferry boat captains, NY rescue folks for showing us how you handle an emergency. Just think, if everyone executed their job as well as this dude, we’d have cured cancer, achieved world peace, ended poverty and starvation and found a way to have a perfect orgasm every time. When you dream, you should dream BIG!

Source: D