I love an experienced man, an experienced Airline Captain that is! The people on U.S. Airways Flight 1549 couldn’t have been luckier that Captain Chesley B “Sully” Sullenberger,was the man in charge. If you want to read more about him check out what Heather Poole has to say. Sounds like he has all the experience you’d ever want in your pilot! Thanks for the info, Heather.

When I got the phone call today, from my husband that a plane had crashed, the usual feeling of dread came over me….followed by some relief that everyone had survived. I actually couldn’t believe it. How is it possible that everyone survived two major crashes within a month of each other? I am oh so grateful, and once again, kudos to the crew…Flight Deck and Cabin. I suspect next time any of you fly you’ll pay a bit closer attention to the safety demo, see it really isn’t a bad idea to make sure you understand how to don that life vest and maybe take note of your nearest exit.

It also freaked me out a bit when I found out the cause of this crash because believe it or not about 12 years ago, I was working a flight headed for Birmingham England and we hit a flock of birds. We were about 2000 ft. off the ground and happened to be banking (turning) at the time of impact, apparently that was what saved us from having the 20 or so seagulls go directly through the engine. I was sitting at door 2 on a 757….I know we fly 757’s to Europe but that’s a whole different story…..and when we hit the birds I heard a huge crash, I thought it came from below. Anyway, here I was facing the passengers, trying to keep a stoic expression while anxiously waiting to hear from the Flight Deck. We circled for what seemed like forever, probably 10-15 minutes. We finally got the call from the FD and were informed that we hit something and everything checked out normal but we’d be going back to Newark. Once on the ground and passengers had de-planed I made the mistake of going down on the tarmac and seeing the damage to the plane. It was pretty bad. There were about five or six good size holes in the fuselage. Amazing. Ok, so if you can believe it, we actually got a new plane and flew onto England….all of our passengers came with. Nobody chickened out. Of course when we finally got there, (we stay in the cutest town in the entire world, Stratford Upon Avon) I joined my whole crew for a pub crawl/de-briefing.

So, am I afraid to fly? Should you be? Absolutely not. Driving is still way scarier….much more frightening. We, airline folk always say that the most dangerous part of our job is the van ride to our hotel! I remember when I was in a crashpad…waaaaay back when and we used to fit 16 of us into a van that was meant to carry 10, and our driver smelled of urine and had narcolepsy….he really did. We would wake him up at every intersection when the light turned green. (I really wish blogging was around when I first started flying, I’d be much more interesting: ) Anyway,if anything these two incidents…Continental 1404 and today’s U.S. Airway’s 1549 should make you realize…you can survive a plane crash…just pay attention to your Flight Attendants and do what your told 😉