my mate skippers 777’s for a living. he’s got an interesting perspective on it. It was great flying but also very lucky that the river was so calm and empty (of shipping) and the air was so still – if you catch a wingtip as you’re going down you’re knackered. If the water is choppy and your nose digs in as you skim to a halt, you’ll go in like a torpedo. The pilot took his chance like a pro but was very lucky to get the chance.
But most interesting is the adulation the bloke got (also the guys in the Heathrow landing last year). As my mate says, they train over and over in the sim for these sorts of incidents so when it happens, they know what to do, they follow the drills that are second nature, and they trust that if they do it right they’ll get the best result. He himself says there’s no more cause to panic or stress than there would be for a medic doing a resuscitation, or a soldier in a firefight, or a fireman in a fire. The stakes might be higher in terms of the lives at risk (of which his would be one) but equally, that’s even more reason to stay calm and do it right.
He had an incident shortly after take off a while back with an engine fire. It was noted, extinguished and they flew around and landed again and evacuated the plane according to the drill with no casualties (bar an over-enthusiastic bloke down one of the slides, flew off the end and broke his arm!) At the debrief his boss commended him but noted that’s what they train and are paid for so if he was expecting a medal or a bonus for it, he was going to be waiting a long time.
And as my mate said, that’s just the way he wants it to be, rather than this hero stuff.
