Thursday 15 January 2009

The captain is the last to leave the ship

...Or the airplane.

Flight 1549 was obliged to land in the Hudson River earlier today, after an unfortunate encounter with a flock of geese. Everyone survived.
At a press conference soon after the incident, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that the plane's pilot Chesley Sullenberger, 57, who used to fly F-4 aircraft for the U.S. Air Force, walked up and down the aisle twice to make sure no one was left on the plane.


His airplane is floating in the middle of a river on one of the coldest days of the year, and Sullenberger checks the plane not once, but twice, to make sure everyone got out safely.

Tell me again why I'm not justified in holding on to a little idealism? There are demonstrably people who still know - and live - the meaning of the words duty, responsibility, and selflessness.


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5 comments:

Jewel Allen said...

Ooh, that'd be frigid! Yeah, nobility and gallantry are not dead!

Janet said...

PI, while I'm a lot more cynical than I used to be, it's things like this that remind me that blanket cynicism is just as foolish as outright naivete. There are still people with good solid values who will actually put them into practice when crunch time comes.

As for frigidity, I think most of the passengers who needed medical attention are the ones who jumped straight into the water. Hypothermia. The ones in the rafts were probably mostly OK.

Anonymous said...

Well, you tagged me, so I started checking your MySpace blog and this one to see if it was one of those type things!

Glad to see you're still against that sort of thing! Phew. lol

And I agree with your sentiments on this post, especially in the dog eat dog world we live in.

Melanie Hooyenga said...

I had the same thought about the captain going down with the ship. That entire crew did a remarkable job.

Janet said...

No, Gary, you're safe for now. And if I ever do another meme, chances are it will be one of those "whoever wants to join in can do so" setups. I really hate imposing on people.

Melanie, it was fun to see a success story, wasn't it, although the owners of the plane might have mixed feelings about it. (Email or Facebook me if nobody explains the knuckle thing to you.)

 

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