We have all heard the story about the US Airways flight 1549 that safely landed in the Hudson River after a bird strike crippled the Airbus full of passengers. While the captain, Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, didn’t run any formalized models, the decisions he made saved at least the 155 people on board. The captain had a long series of decisions to make in the 6 minute flight that ended with the radio call “We’re going to be in the Hudson”. The captain had to balance instinct, logic, and evidence in order the make decisions. In this case, time did not permit a logic based theoretical analysis. Interesting enough flight simulators and experts later confirmed the decision not to attempt to return to either LaGuardia or the nearby Teterboro airport. Beyond simple logic that estimates the distance the aircraft could glide at a given altitude, the captains decisions were made based on evidence from what he was experiencing in the cockpit and instinct from decades of flight experience.
For example, the captain likely weighed out the benefits and consequences of gliding over Manhattan to return to LaGuardia. An emergency landing at this airport would have been accommodated by emergency crews trained to handle this type of situation, potentially saving all passengers and the aircraft. This act would have involved considerably more risk should he not have been able to reach the airport, inflicting additional casualties from bystanders. Given the near zero success rate for “water landings”, choosing the Hudson may have been considered a concession, limiting the scope of the accident to those aboard the plane.
Link to BUS650: The Ralph Keeney models on how people do decide and should decide apply to this situation. In this case the captain made a series of decisions in what Keeney describes as “clear thinking consistent with decision analysis”.
Wikipedia account of the story.
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549
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