“We’d never finished a flight.”

DOPO AVER SCRITTO questa cosa nell'altro Posto, mi sono reso conto che mi ero perso il ritorno al lavoro del comandante Chesley B. Sullenberger III detto "Sully" e del suo primo ufficiale Jeffrey Skiles, lo scorso primo ottobre. Un rientro alquanto spettacolare dal punto di vista dell'attenzione dei media, ma per fortuna per niente spettacolare come svolgimento.

Money Quote: “He’s like Madonna,” one woman said, in what surely was the first comparison of a 58-year-old commercial pilot with a white moustache to a lascivious pop star.

Amid the adulation, Mr. Sullenberger and his co-pilot, Jeffrey Skiles, managed to accomplish what they had come to New York to do: Reunite at the controls of a flight from La Guardia that would complete the 90-minute flight to Charlotte.

After landing smoothly in Charlotte around 2:30 p.m., Mr. Sullenberger reached out his hand to Mr. Skiles and they silently congratulated each other on a job uneventfully done. It is a traditional gesture between pilots at the end of a flight, Mr. Skiles said, but this one was a first for them.

“I’d never gotten to do that with Sully,” Mr. Skiles said. “We’d never finished a flight.”