By Sholnn Freeman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 1, 2009

Federal efforts to improve U.S. aviation safety after a deadly regional plane crash in February have hit major obstacles, sapping momentum for a reform effort that enjoyed broad political support earlier this year.

A number of aviation safety proposals have been filed in Congress this year in response to the Feb. 12 crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 outside Buffalo. The crash killed 50 people, making it the deadliest U.S. transportation accident in seven years.

In preliminary hearings and reports, the National Transportation Safety Board has exposed a number of safety issues, including lax pilot hiring practices, problems related to training and fatigue and superficial regulatory oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration.

In three days of hearings in March, the NTSB released cockpit voice transcripts from the accident, and the plane’s co-pilot can be heard expressing fears about poor training and her inadequacies as an entry-level pilot. The safety board’s revelations were followed by a wave of news conferences, news releases and congressional hearings in which lawmakers demanded action.

Action appears to have been stymied on a number of fronts, however. Objections from U.S. aviation colleges have slowed House legislation intended to improve safety. The schools are fighting a provision that would require all airline pilots to obtain airline transport pilot certificates from the FAA, substantially boosting the flight time of entry-level pilots. Under current regulations, only senior pilots must have the certificates, which require 1,500 hours of flight time.

The flight time requirement is a big problem for the colleges, which tend to graduate pilots who have 250 to 350 hours. Pilots from the schools have been able to move quickly to entry-level jobs at regional airlines as junior pilots. The new rule would force graduates to spend an additional year or more acquiring the required flight hours.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the country’s largest aviation school, has emerged in recent weeks as a major opponent of the provision. The school’s Daytona Beach campus is in the district of Rep. John L. Mica (Fla.), ranking Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which oversees aviation.

Tim Brady, dean of Embry-Riddle’s College of Aviation, and other aviation educators said the provision would spur aspiring airline pilots to fulfill the flying time requirement by piloting crop-dusters and towing banners.

Staff members in Mica’s office have been working on a compromise with FAA officials and committee Democrats.

Jim Berard, a spokesman for the House transportation committee, said he is confident that the group could reach “an amicable solution.” But a compromise could alienate other House Democrats, families of crash victims and pilot union members who back reforms.

“Any attempt to decrease the qualifications below the level of an airline transport pilot license is watering it down,” said Capt. James Ray, media chairman of the U.S. Airline Pilots Association, which represents 5,200 US Airways pilots and has been a strong backer of the bill.

Meanwhile, other efforts to improve aviation safety have foundered. In the Senate, action on aviation safety legislation has taken a back seat as key lawmakers grapple with health-care reform.

Separately, an FAA initiative to extract voluntary commitments from the aviation industry to improve safety has drawn sharp criticism from Democrats. In June, FAA Administrator J. Randolph Babbitt wrote dozens of airlines and eight labor unions asking them to upgrade safety practices and report back to him on their progress.

Rep. Jerry F. Costello (D-Ill.), chairman of the House aviation subcommittee, credited Babbitt with starting a rulemaking process aimed at addressing pilot fatigue this year. But Costello said that the FAA had failed to impose firm deadlines and that data from the voluntary initiative are “raw and incomplete.”

The FAA has said 69 of 98 airlines and three of eight aviation unions have responded. Babbitt vowed last week to publicize the names of unresponsive airlines and unions.

“While we haven’t heard from everyone at this point,” Babbitt said at the hearing, “I will use my bully pulpit going forward.”

Dallas Morning News
12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, August 29, 2009
By TERRY MAXON
tmaxon@dallasnews.com

A federal judge has told the pilots union at American Airlines Inc. that the union can’t encourage its members not to fly overtime.

The U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., said that while American Airlines pilots have the right not to volunteer to fly extra flights, the Allied Pilots Association can’t urge members to forgo volunteering. The court said such advice would violate the Railway Labor Act and harm the airline’s operations. The Allied Pilots Association, which asked for a ruling last August, had wanted to avoid furloughs by making sure that pilots didn’t fly extra trips – and thus reduce the number of pilots needed by American.

But the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled that such advice would violate the Railway Labor Act and harm the airline’s operations.

The court said that while members have the right not to volunteer to fly extra flights, the union can’t urge members to forgo volunteering.

“There is a difference between an individual exercising his or her right under a contract and a union collectively encouraging its members to exercise those individual rights,” Judge Alexander Williams Jr. said in his Aug. 17 ruling.

In a statement Friday, the airline said it is “pleased that judge supported our position in this case.”

At issue is “open time” – the flights in the airline’s monthly schedule that have no pilot assigned to operate them. American uses reserve pilots who don’t have regular monthly schedules to fly many of those flights, but it also counts on its more senior pilots to volunteer to pick up the flights to make additional money.

According to the court ruling, American estimated it would have to hire 333 pilots at a cost of $59 million a year to avoid disrupting its operations if all nonreserve pilots didn’t volunteer to pick up open time.

“APA has presented absolutely no evidence to show that its proposed actions would not interrupt commerce or American’s operations,” Williams’ ruling said.

“Instead, the crux of APA’s argument is its reliance on American’s ability and obligations to use other mechanisms to cover open time if lineholders opt not to fly voluntary open time.”

The union and American Airlines have been negotiating a new contract since summer 2006. As such, both sides must maintain the status quo, meaning they can’t do something they haven’t been doing all along.

In any case, the issue is moot for the moment. The issue came up in summer 2008 when American was warning it would need to furlough pilots in the fall. As it turned out, the airline didn’t furlough any pilots, and it recalled a handful this year.

The union said Friday that the judge “also declined to rule – as management had sought – that APA had an improper purpose for initiating an open-time campaign. Management contended that APA was seeking to influence collective bargaining, rather than mitigate furloughs.”

By CHRISTOPHER CONKEY and ANDY PASZTOR
The Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of lawmakers plans Wednesday to introduce legislation aimed at curbing pilot fatigue and beefing up training, as part of a far-reaching bid to improve airline safety.

Responding to a high-profile commuter plane crash earlier this year, lawmakers are slated to introduced a bill in a House committee focusing on human errors that can lead to airline accidents. The legislation envisions overhauling the way airlines hire, train and manage their flight crews.

The proposal drew criticism Tuesday from an airline-industry group, but it has bipartisan support from senior House members, and the Senate is considering similar but less-sweeping measures.

Congress is targeting airline safety after the National Transportation Safety Board called attention to mistakes by apparently tired pilots at the controls of Colgan Air flight 3407, a commuter plane that claimed 50 lives when it crashed outside Buffalo, N.Y., in February. The NTSB is still investigating the crash.

House Aviation Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Costello (D., Ill.), the main sponsor of the House bill, called his proposals “a serious effort to consolidate what we know industrywide about aviation safety.” Some of the proposals could entail significant extra costs for carriers, along with substantial management changes inside the Federal Aviation Administration.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D., W.V.) said the Senate must “take the necessary steps now to make certain that one level of safety exists across the entire commercial airline system.” Mr. Rockefeller and other FAA critics have said commuter pilots often work more grueling schedules and receive less training than pilots at larger airlines, but regional carriers contend they all meet minimum safety standards.

Details uncovered in the NTSB’s Colgan investigation portrayed the two pilots as distracted and ill-equipped to prevent and respond to the midair stall that occurred as the plane descended toward Buffalo in icy conditions.

The House bill would require the Federal Aviation Administration to update and tighten regulations covering everything from cockpit training and pre-employment screening to the sharing of voluntary safety data among large carriers and commuter airlines. It ratchets up pressure on both the FAA and airlines to embrace changes long demanded by pilot union leaders and independent safety experts.

Among other requirements, the House bill calls for carriers to tailor training for pilots based on their experience and type of aircraft they are flying. The FAA also would be required to do more to oversee remedial training of pilots who performed poorly on flight tests, and airlines would have to set up formal mentoring programs to help junior pilots.

To crack down on sleepy pilots, the legislation orders the FAA to draft new scheduling rules and fatigue-prevention plans within a year based on the latest sleep research. In a controversial move that could alienate some airline employees, the bill also calls for regulators to consider potentially negative safety consequences from pilots who routinely fly long distances and may report for duty already fatigued.

Going further than other air-safety bills in recent years, the House package sets higher minimum experience levels across the board, affecting newly hired pilots. And it calls for re-evaluating the traditional length of training periods.

For the first time, regulators once a year would be required to specifically tell Congress how they are carrying out safety recommendations from the NTSB.

The main trade group representing U.S. airlines took issue with the House bill. Air Transport Association President James May said airlines and regulators are already “fully engaged in determining the best course of action in response to the Colgan Air accident.”

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency is working on revamped fatigue rules, has updated some pilot-training regulations and continues to hold public workshops across the U.S. addressing other issues raised in the House bill.

Spokesmen for Colgan Air Inc. and Continental Airlines Inc., Colgan’s partner in the flight that crashed near Buffalo, declined to comment.

By SUSAN CAREY and ANDY PASZTOR
The Wall Street Journal

Facing escalating congressional criticism, the Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday it ordered immediate inspections of pilot-training programs at smaller carriers.

As part of stepped-up oversight efforts, the agency and the Department of Transportation also set a safety meeting of major carriers, regional airlines, labor and aviation-industry groups for Monday.

In addition, commuter airlines plan to launch their own call for wide-ranging new safety measures. The high-profile moves come on the eve of what is expected to be tough congressional scrutiny of the agency’s supervision of regional airlines.

The government and the regional industry, which transports one in four U.S. passengers, have come under fire since the February crash of a Colgan Air Inc. turboprop near Buffalo, N.Y., that killed 50 people. An initial hearing last month by the National Transportation Safety Board revealed that the pilots were fatigued, inattentive and lacked adequate emergency training on the plane they were flying. The captain’s history of botched flight-proficiency tests also came out.

There have been four fatal U.S. regional-airline crashes and several other serious accidents in the past five years, translating into a much higher accident rate than for large airlines.

Randy Babbitt, the FAA administrator, said his goal “is to make sure that the entire industry-from large commercial carriers to smaller, regional operators-is meeting our safety standard.”

Mr. Babbit, who was confirmed just three weeks ago, appears intent on showing that the FAA can be proactive in policing regional airlines. While the FAA will wait for the final NTSB report on the Buffalo crash, “there are things we should be doing now,” Mr. Babbitt said.

The Regional Airline Association, which represents the bulk of the nation’s commuter carriers, is expected to tell a House panel Thursday that it is ready to develop new ways to study and combat pilot fatigue, including possible random tests of cockpit crews.

In addition, the group for the first time is advocating a joint industry-government plan to create a comprehensive data base of pilot records that can be checked for new hires. It is also expected to suggest random downloads of cockpit voice recorders to see if pilots are breaking safety rules by engaging in extraneous conversations. Some of the proposals would require legislation.

Both the move by the FAA and the industry association come as Congress prepares to debate whether current safety oversight of commuter airlines is adequate.

The FAA wants to foster improvements in areas such as pilot training, cockpit discipline, airline management’s responsibilities for crew education and the relationships between major airlines and their regional partners. An FAA spokeswoman said the agenda is still being developed.

By calling for an industry-wide safety “summit” next week, the new FAA chief is following the same playbook that launched an initiative two years ago to reduce the hazards of runway incursions-planes running into each other on the ground. After a “call to action,” the FAA and the industry looked at engineering and operational changes that would have dramatic short-term impact. Their efforts produced some early results, but long-term fixes remain elusive.

Next week’s meeting will underscore the regulator’s new focus on potential training pitfalls at regional carriers. However, pilot training is a complex, costly, multiyear process that isn’t easy to revamp quickly. Moreover, it is tied up in the economics of the regional industry, whose major selling point to big carriers is its low cost.

Regional airlines compete to fly routes for large carriers, which are demanding lower prices to keep their own expenses under control.

“The FAA didn’t keep up with the changing demographics and needs of the [regional] industry,” said Capt. Paul Rice, first vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association union. Commuter airlines’ breakneck growth in recent years “exposed shortcomings in training, licensing, checking,” he said.

In the months since the Buffalo accident, the FAA has stepped up surveillance of some regional carriers. One is Gulfstream International Airlines, a Florida commuter carrier that provides flight training to many new pilots, including the captain in the Buffalo crash and pilots in two other regional accidents.

Last month, the FAA proposed a $1.3 million civil penalty against Gulfstream International, citing improper maintenance and pilot scheduling. In a separate audit in March, the FAA found more than 20 separate alleged violations. Gulfstream said it quickly fixed any problems and is appealing the earlier penalty.

Because they must keep their costs down and fly smaller planes, regional airlines pay their pilots far less than their peers at the big airlines. With those low wages, the regionals don’t tend to attract well-trained military pilots, but must look for fresh hires from lightly regulated flying schools and training academies.

When the big airlines are hiring, regional pilots move on to those better-paying jobs, which creates high attrition and leads to even more relatively inexperienced aviators being hired at commuter airlines. That means the initial and recurrent training that regional carriers provide for their pilots is crucial.

Ted Reed
TheStreet.com
06/05/09 - 12:20 PM EDT

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A new survey shows that pilots at overnight cargo carriers FedEx and UPS command the highest salaries among the 11 largest U.S. airlines, while pilots at US Airways are the lowest paid.

The discrepancies reflect trends that have shaped airline pay patterns since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, including a round of bankruptcies that enabled reduced costs at passenger airlines and a unique battle between pilots at US Airways, as well as society’s increasing reliance on the overnight carrier duopoly.

For the overnight carriers, “the barriers to entry are high, the Internet boom has helped them a lot and the business wasn’t that badly affected by 9/11,” says Louis Smith, a retired Northwest captain who is president of Flt.Ops.com, which provides career counseling for pilots and conducted the pilot pay survey.

Among the 10 leading passenger carriers, four sought bankruptcy protection during the four years following the attacks and the concurrent economic slowdown. For the industry, the bankruptcy restructurings enabled two years of profits, in 2006 and 2007, following a five-year period when net losses totaled about $35 billion.

For decades, pilots for passenger carriers were kings of the sky, while pilots for overnight and cargo carriers were sometimes thought of as not-ready-for-prime time. In recent years, that perception has disappeared.

The current recession is impacting both overnight and passenger carriers. FedEx and UPS are each seeking $1 billion in annual cost reductions, and pilot costs are not exempt. UPS, for instance, wants $40 million in 2009 savings from its pilots, as well as additional savings in future years. The company, which recently retired its DC-8 fleet, says it has 300 pilots more than it needs.

Passenger carriers may have the advantage now, Smith says, because each of the major carriers generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually in fees for baggage and other services. “Fed Ex and UPS can’t add fees and become luggage shipping companies the way the passenger airlines have done, and they can’t stimulate demand by cutting ticket prices,” Smith says.

Pilot contract negotiations are currently under way at American, Continental and United.

Meanwhile, at US Airways, pilots made concessions in bankruptcy to keep the airline afloat. The new, low-cost structure enabled a 2005 merger with America West. But pilots have been unable to agree on a seniority policy, which has hindered efforts to jointly negotiate new contracts, leaving existing contracts in place.

Pilots from the original US Airways “contributed $6.8 billion, including pension reductions, over the course of two bankruptcies to keep the company alive,” says Arnie Gentile, spokesman for the U.S. Airline Pilots Association, which represents US Airways pilots. “Then the company turned its back on the pilots and has not negotiated new contracts.”

Gentile says the airline has used the seniority dispute as an excuse, noting, “US Airways had many opportunities to reach an agreement with its pilots prior to the dispute over seniority issues.” However, airline spokeswoman Michelle Mohr says the airline wants to be responsive to pilots and did make a 2007 contract offer that would have increased annual spending for pilots by $122 million.

“The seniority issue isn’t an excuse for us,” Mohr said. “We know our pilots are working very hard to integrate the seniority lists, and we are trying to be respectful of their process for determining what is going to work best for them.”

Beyond unique US Airways issues, Gentile says that across the passenger airline industry, the pilot profession is being diminished by low wages, particularly for entry-level pilots who make just $21,600 at US Airways flying the Embraer E190, and even less at the regional airlines where may pilots get their first jobs.

Rebecca Shaw, the first officer on the Colgan Air flight, flying as Continental Connection, that crashed near Buffalo, N.Y., in February, killing all on board, had worked 13 months for Colgan and earned $23,900 annually, the carrier has said. Initially, National Transportation Safety Board investigators had said she earned $16,000 annually.

Nevertheless, the airline industry’s high safety standards are threatened by a reduced salary structure, says Gentile. “Far fewer pilots (are) looking for commercial airline jobs,” he says. “Today, when given career choices, both experienced pilots and young individuals breaking in have difficulty justifying the financial sacrifice.”

By TERRY MAXON / The Dallas Morning News

Southwest Airlines Co. pilots rejected a proposed contract by a narrow margin, the union representing the pilots said Wednesday.

The Southwest Airlines Pilots’ Association said 50.8 percent of pilots voting were against the contract, with 49.2 percent in favor. The vote was 2,774 for and 2,869 against.

“Our pilots have spoken, and the group has stated there is more work to be done,” union president Carl Kuwitzky said. “This contract, despite some financial gains, contained too many other negative aspects to ratify it.”

Chuck Magill, Southwest’s vice president of flight operations, said that “we are naturally disappointed and acknowledge it was a very close vote.”

He said the airline welcomes “the opportunity for our negotiating teams to re-engage and work toward an agreement that best meets the needs of our company and our outstanding pilots during these challenging economic times.”

Union officials did not speculate about why a majority of its members turned down the deal. Kuwitzky said the contract, the pilots’ first new deal in 15 years, had a lot of changes that would have affected scheduling, and other items also would have affected pilots.

However, “I don’t think there’s any one issue,” he said. “I think there are three or four issues that we’ll find after we go through the polling process that our membership disagreed with and rejected the TA [tentative agreement] over.”

The rejected deal would have provided a 2 percent pay raise on Sept. 1, and retroactive raises for Sept. 1 of 2007 and 2008, with back pay. Pay increases in 2010 and 2011 would have been based on the carrier’s profitability.

The union’s negotiators had wrapped up contract talks in late March, while some pilots were unhappy about Southwest’s plans to code-share with other airlines - that is, putting Southwest flight numbers on flights to and from Canada operated by WestJet Airlines Ltd. and to and from Mexico on flights by Volaris.

Kuwitzky said the polling will determine how big a part the code-sharing played in the contract’s rejection. “Scope” - the principle that all flying done on behalf of an airline is performed by the airline’s pilots - is a contentious issue at many carriers.

“While this TA has some significant improvement in scope and code-share, the fact that our company is code-sharing to markets we can fly in Canada and Mexico just doesn’t sit well with a number of our pilots,” Kuwitzky said.

The pilots’ contract rejection marks the Dallas-based carrier’s first defeat in negotiations this year. Since Jan. 1, Southwest has signed new contracts with the unions representing its flight attendants; ramp, operations, provisioning and freight agents; and mechanics.

It also has a tentative agreement with its customer support and services and airport customer service employees, who began voting on that deal Monday.

Airlines » Questions of fatigue, low pay encircle regional aviators in wake of crash

By David M. Halbfinger, Matthew L. Wald and Christopher Drew
New York Times News Service
05/20/2009

Alex Lapointe, a 25-year-old co-pilot for a regional airline, says he routinely lifts off knowing he has gotten less sleep than he needs.

Neil Weston, also 25, went $100,000 into debt to train for a co-pilot’s job that pays him $25,000 annually. He carries sandwiches in a cooler from his home in Dubuque, Iowa, and holds out hope of tripling his salary by moving into the captain’s seat, then up to a major carrier. Assuming the majors start hiring again.

Capt. Paul Nietz, 58, who recently retired, said his schedule wore him down and cost him three marriages. His workweek began with a 2:30 a.m. wake-up in Michigan and a 6 a.m. flight to his Chicago home base. There, he would wait for his first assignment, a noon departure.

By the time he parked his aircraft at the last gate of the night, he was exhausted but would be due back at work eight hours and 15 minutes later. “And I was very senior. I was one of the fortunate guys.”

The National Transportation Safety Board’s inquiry into the Feb. 12 crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 outside Buffalo has highlighted the operations of the nation’s regional airlines, a sector that has grown to account for half the country’s airline flights and a quarter of its passengers.

The details of that world have surprised many Americans — the strikingly low pay for new pilots; the rigors of flying multiple flights, at lower altitudes and thus often in worse weather than pilots on longer routes; the relative inexperience of pilots at the smaller airlines, whose training standards are the same, but whose skills may not be.

In hearings last week in Washington, witnesses and safety officials raised questions of whether the crew of the plane that crashed, killing all 49 people on board and one on the ground, had been adequately vetted and whether they might have been hampered by, among other factors, fatigue.

The renewed worries over commuter planes come as passenger airlines, regional and mainline, have achieved unprecedented levels of safety. Passenger deaths per million flights are down by more than two-thirds in the past 10 years. The people on board the Buffalo flight were the first in 30 months to die on a passenger carrier.

But of the six passenger flights that have crashed since Sept. 11, 2001, only one has been from a major carrier. Four were commuter flights, on which 133 people died. (The fifth, a 50-year-old seaplane in Miami, was in neither category.)

Regardless of whether training, fatigue or the cost-cutting that has hit the entire industry are determined to have contributed to the crash of Flight 3407, interviews with current and former regional pilots make clear their daily challenges.

Peek inside a crew lounge at midnight in Chicago, and you’ll easily find every recliner occupied by an off-duty aviator trying to sleep despite the whine of a janitor’s vacuum cleaner.

In any city with a sizable air hub, a search of Craigslist for the term “crash pad” will turn up listings for rooms for rent a short drive from an airport, where a dozen or more pilots, unable to afford hotels, may come and go, barely letting the mattresses cool.

But many regional pilots, paid entry-level wages that are sometimes no better than a job at McDonald’s, cannot afford even a crash pad.

“I know a guy who bought a car that barely ran, parked it in the employee lot at his base airport and slept [there] six or seven times a month,” said Frank Graham Jr., a former regional pilot and airline safety director who runs a safety consulting firm in Charlotte, N.C. Pilots for some regional airlines have been known to sleep in the aisles of their planes.

Like the two Flight 3407 pilots, who caught free rides on planes from Florida and Seattle to their flight from Newark to Buffalo, pilots routinely hopscotch across thousands of miles to get to work. And fatigue also is a problem for the mainline carriers, which sometimes are more vulnerable because they fly longer routes across more time zones.

U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who is chairman of the subcommittee on aviation, said his group would conduct a series of hearings next month.

There is nothing wrong with commuting cross-country to fly, said Roger Cohen of the Regional Airline Association; he pointed out Capt. Chesley Sullenberger III, the US Airways pilot who landed his Airbus A320 in the Hudson River on Jan. 15, lives in Danville, Calif., and is based in Charlotte, N.C.

To the extent the Senate hearings address fatigue, they will not be the first. In 1995, the government proposed shortening pilots’ workdays, but the airlines, which deny fatigue is a significant problem, opposed the changes, and the effort failed.

Air Force Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. John F. Regni and 1973 U.S. graduate and classmate Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger salute during a parade held April 15 on the Terrazzo. Captain Sullenberger received the 2009 Col. James Jabara for Airmanship for displaying extraordinary Airmanship in hazardous conditions. (U.S. Air Force photo/Mike Kaplan)

by Tech. Sgt. Cortchie Welch
U.S. Air Force Academy Public Affairs

4/17/2009 - U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AFNS) — Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who saved U.S. Airways Flight 1549 with a heroic water landing in January, returned to the roots of his aviation career here Wednesday to accept a coveted flight award from the Air Force Academy.

Captain Sullenberger, a 1973 graduate, received the 2009 Colonel James Jabara Award for Airmanship during a ceremony on the Academy’s Terrazzo that included a pass and review of 4,400 cadets.

“It’s humbling to be in such company - it’s quite an honor,” said Captain Sullenberger, a seasoned pilot. Past winners of the award include 1st Lt. Karl Richter, a 1964 Academy graduate, who at the age of 23 was the youngest pilot in the Vietnam conflict to shoot down a MiG in air-to-air combat.

During his two-day return to the Academy, Captain Sullenberger, who was classmates with Lt. Gen. John Regni, Academy superintendent, and Gen. Norton Schwartz, Air Force chief of staff, made a visit to his old Cadet Squadron-18, held a question-and-answer assembly with cadets and took a glider for a flight.

“The flight was wonderful, beautiful,” said the captain, who, as an Academy glider instructor pilot, amassed more than 1,000 flight hours - an unprecedented number for a cadet. “I spent a big part of my time here flying gliders. People seemed to think that it was really exceptional that I was able to fly so much while I was here. It was a great sense of satisfaction that I was able to do that. And this glider flight was a great reminder of that. It was a pleasure to be on the airfield again and fly with a cadet.”

Captain Sullenberger, a native of Denison, Texas, and his crew with 155 people aboard Flight 1549 earned international acclaim Jan. 15 when they collectively put their emergency evacuation skills to the test.

Almost immediately after takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia Airport, the Airbus 320 that Captain Sullenberger piloted lost power in both engines after striking a flock of birds. With extraordinaire calm and coolness, he began to make decisions and maneuvers that resulted in a successful emergency landing the world is still talking about.

The captain explained how he and the crew showed so much composure during the crisis that carried over to the 150 passengers.

“Jeff [First Officer Skiles] and myself had been doing this for so long that we were just focused on doing our jobs,” Captain Sullenberger said. “You don’t allow other things to distract you. It was the experience and training of the flight attendants, who displayed an outwardly calm and professional demeanor, that got the passengers to respond in kind.”

Exhibiting Air Force core values, he walked the length of the aircraft twice to ensure everyone had safely evacuated the plane.

Three months after the “Miracle on the Hudson,” Captain Sullenberger said he continues to get a large quantity of letters and gratitude from admirers and well-wishers. He said he thinks often about a reunion meeting of his crew and passengers along with their families that took place in Charlotte, N.C., in February.

“The most touching part for me during the reunion was when women came up to me and said, ‘Thank you for not making me a widow,’ ‘Thank you for allowing my 3-year-old son to have a father,’ and ‘Thank you for keeping my family intact,” he recounted.

He said the story of Flight 1549 captured the imagination of America and the world because, “People were looking for good news, they were looking for a reason to be hopeful again.”

“I think this event was an anecdote to all the bad news that has happened in the last couple of years,” said the former F-4 Phantom pilot.

He said it’s difficult to point to any particular training he’d received at the Academy that guided him during the heroic act on the Hudson River.

“It was many little things that added up to an important whole,” he said. “It was the entire experience [at the Academy].”

Captain Sullenberger, who lives in Danville, Calif., with his family, said it’s “been a gradual concept” to fully realize the impact of his heroic actions.

“It’s taken time to process and incorporate those events into my persona,” he said. “But I’m confident that we made the right choices. I’m confident that we had the best outcome that we could have under those circumstances. I’m satisfied and very grateful for a successful outcome with no injuries. Over time, I really appreciate how remarkable that event was.”

Captain Sullenberger last visited the Academy about 25 years ago during his 10-year reunion.

“I’d had forgotten what a beautiful location it is,” he said. “I’ve always loved this part of Colorado, with the big sky and a very dramatic landscape. I’m gratified to see so much construction going on. I’m glad to see the investment being made.”

The airline captain said being with cadets was refreshing.

“It was great to be with the cadets,” he said. “It couldn’t have been more wonderful. The cadets have taken good care of the Academy while I’ve been gone. The future is bright.”

Cadets returned the praise.

“He’s down to Earth,” said Cadet 1st Class Anne Marie Wathen, a native of Atlanta. “He’s not in it for the fame. He deserves all the recognition he gets.”

Cadet 2nd Class Erik Nelson of Uncasville, Conn., said he has great respect for Mr. Sullenberger because of the passion he shows for flying.

“He’s a notch above the rest,” Cadet Nelson said. “His passion for flying gave him the edge to do what needed to do to land the plane safely.”