Captain Sully, Miracle On The Hudson Pilot, Reacts to ‘Catastrophic’ American Airlines Crash In D.C.

Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger, the pilot who safely landed a passenger plane on the Hudson River in 2009, has weighed in on Wednesday night’s devastating collision between an American Airlines jet and a U.S. military helicopter which presumably left all those involved dead. Speaking on “Good Morning America,” the aviation safety expert, also known as Capt. Sully, shared how a “catastrophic event” like this could happen. “Well, what we have to realize [is] how many things have to go right every day for us to have this now ultra safe transportation industry. We have in this country, you know, 10,000 flights a day, you know, 10.2 million flights a year. And we operate them all safely. But it’s hard. It’s hard to have the diligence and the dedication to adhere to best practices on every minute of every hour of every day, every week, every month, every year for a decades long aviation career. That’s what’s required,” he said in part, adding, “And any lapse could potentially be fatal. Even though we have a lot of safety layers in there. If all the dominoes line up in the wrong way, we can have, on rare occasions, a catastrophic event.” The diplomat also spoke about the high-trafficked Reagan Washington National Airport which he called a “legacy airport,” and later, assured the public about flight safety. “The chances of any one of us being in an airline crash is infinitesimal, and that we have a lot of people who work very hard every day and are very dedicated to keep us safe. And we have thousands of people doing that every day. We just don’t know who they all are.”