Elmer Smith: 'Water landing': Another way to say 'hero'

APPARENTLY, U.S. Airways allows its pilots to call in sick if they hydroplane a powerless airliner with 155 passengers to a perfect, tail-first landing on the Hudson River.

Chesley Sullenberger has spent much of his time off avoiding people who wanted him to recall in thrilling detail the climactic moments of that improbable "water landing."

We've all heard flight attendants speak of using seat cushions as flotation devices "in case of a water landing." But, I always thought the term "water landing" was a euphemism for plunging to your death in a watery grave where your dismembered parts would be picked over by large sea creatures.

Turns out that they actually teach pilots to "land" in water.

Perhaps the most incredible thing Sullenberger said in his first "full" interview with CBS's Katie Couric is that he never doubted he could do it.

"I was sure I could do it," he said. "I think in many ways . . . my life up to that moment had been a preparation to handle that particular moment."

Even more incredible is that there are scores of pilots who could have done it too.

Until I saw those passengers standing on the wings like commuters waiting for the Paoli local, I wouldn't have believed anyone could do it.

"You glide it," Sullenberger said when an incredulous Couric asked how he expected to do it.

As he explained in his matter-of-fact delivery, you glide it down tail first with the wings level and the nose slightly up. It's right there in the pilot's manual.

How you keep the wings level with the tail down and the nose up is a good question. A better one is how he kept his emotions level and his tail down in his seat as the river was rushing up to meet him.

They can't teach cool. They can run you through a checklist of contingencies, drill you on what levers to pull and commands to give.

But they can't teach you how to avoid soiling your trousers in the process.

They can teach you how to multitask so you can run through your restart procedures, and talk with the tower while scanning the river for a place to land near but not on potential rescue vessels.

There may even be a chapter on how to walk-search the full length of a downed plane for overlooked passengers. But to do that twice even as the cabin fills with river water is extracurricular.

My expert on crash-landings is Maj. Aric N. Arnold, who is now my son-in-law. He was an aviation-operations student at Jacksonville University on Thanksgiving Day of 1993 when he flew my daughter Cheryl around Jacksonville in a four-seat Cessna.

The single engine went out and he glided the small plane to the ground, where it bounced high enough for a wind gust to lift it back into the air. He managed, incredibly, to bank it and crash-land on the roof of a house at 1833 Live Oak Drive.

He and my daughter walked away unscathed. The plane looked to be intact, but a break in its spine meant that it was totaled.

He explained how he worked to restart the engine, switched to the auxiliary gas tank thinking an impurity in the gasoline may have stalled the engine and did all of this in a few terrifying moments while he was trying to find a safe place to "put it down."

What I found incredible is that he remained so calm that Cheryl didn't even know it was a crash-landing until they hit the ground and bounced up.

I haven't talked with Aric about Chesley Sullenberger's feat because he doesn't like to be reminded of that Thanksgiving Day in Jacksonville.

But it was the most important Thanksgiving Day in the history of our family.

I got the sense that Sullenberger may soon tire of talking about it too. But there are at least 155 people who will never stop talking about it. *

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith