Highest Duty

6. FAST, NEAT, AVERAGE

WHEN PASSENGERS ARE awaiting takeoff on a commercial plane, I’m guessing that most of them don’t give a lot of thought to how the pilots in the cockpit got their jobs. Passengers seem most concerned about when they have to turn off their cell phones, or whether it’s still possible to use the restroom before the cabin door is closed. They wonder about making their connecting flights, or being stuck in the middle seat. They’re not thinking about the pilot’s training or experience. I understand that.

Some passengers boarding Flight 1549 at LaGuardia said they had noticed my gray hair, which they equated with experience. But none of them asked about my résumé, my flight record, or my educational background. And why would they? As they should, they trusted that my airline, US Airways, had rigorously selected its pilots based on federally mandated criteria.

And yet, every pilot has a very personal story of how he or she ended up in control of that type of aircraft and in that particular airline’s cockpit. We all had our own unique paths and career progressions, and then found our way to commercial aviation. We don’t often talk about all the steps we took, even among ourselves, but every time we pilot a flight, we are bringing with us all of the things we’ve learned over the thousands of hours and millions of miles we’ve flown.

Until the mid-1990s, 80 percent of pilots working for major airlines were trained in the military, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Now, just 40 percent of newly hired pilots get their training in the military. The rest come through civilian training programs, including some two hundred universities that offer aviation training. The World War II and Korean veterans—my mentors when I started—retired as commercial pilots more than two decades ago, after turning sixty years old, then the mandatory retirement age. There aren’t a great many Vietnam-era pilots left either, even though the retirement age was raised to sixty-five in 2007.

As for myself, I am grateful that I came into aviation through the military. I appreciate the discipline taught to me during my days in the Air Force, and the many hours of intense training I received. In some civilian programs, pilots aren’t always taught with the same rigor.

I was tested in so many significant ways during my time in the service that I sometimes look back and wonder: How did I make it through? How did I succeed when some didn’t? How was I able to complete every flight, landing my plane safely, when others I knew and respected didn’t make it safely to the runway and lost their lives? As I look back, I reflect on the intersections of preparation and circumstance, and that helps me understand.

MY MILITARY career provided many of the important steps along the way. The initiation to my military life began in the spring of 1969, when I was a senior in high school and went to see my congressman, Ray Roberts, at his office in the ranching town of McKinney. Then fifty-six years old, he was a well-regarded Democratic leader in Texas, who six years earlier had been in President Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas. He was four cars behind the presidential limousine when the shots were fired.

I had come to Representative Roberts because in order to attend one of the service academies, I’d need a congressional appointment. In some congressional districts, patronage determined which young people got appointments at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland; the Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs, Colorado; the Military Academy at West Point, New York; the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York; or the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut.

But Representative Roberts believed his appointments should be merit-based. And so he had ambitious young men like me come to his office to be interviewed by a panel of retired generals and admirals who lived in his district.

After we’d gone to the post office to take a civil service exam and scored well enough on it, we were brought before this ad hoc board of military heavyweights at the congressman’s office. The board he put together had two tasks. First, to determine whether an applicant had what it took to make it at a service academy. Second, to decide which academy an applicant was best suited for. Since my dad didn’t know anyone in high places, I was grateful to have a chance to land an appointment on merit. I had a shot.

I was nervous going to my interview, uncomfortably dressed in my sport coat and tie, but I was excited, too. I’d devoured books about the military and about aviation since I learned how to read. I’d paid attention. So I was prepared when I finally sat down in front of that panel of four senior officers for their very formal twenty-minute proceeding.

The retired Army general seemed to enjoy lobbing questions. “Mr. Sullenberger,” he said, “can you tell me which branch of the service has the most aircraft?”

I assumed most applicants would give the obvious answer: the U.S. Air Force. But I knew this was a trick question. And I had done my homework. I’d studied the specifics of each branch of service and the aircraft they used. “Well, sir,” I said, “if you’re including helicopters in your count, the U.S. Army would have the most aircraft.”

The retired general smiled. I was passing the audition. As we continued talking, he seemed eager to have me go to West Point. But I was pretty straightforward that day. I wanted to fly jets in the Navy or the Air Force, and I didn’t want to go to West Point.

As things turned out, Representative Roberts offered the Air Force Academy appointment to another applicant. He gave me the Naval Academy appointment. Then, as fate would have it, the boy with the Air Force slot declined to take it. And so I moved up from the alternate spot.

I was eighteen years old and bound for Colorado. I would be receiving the full ride of a first-class education. In return, I agreed to pay my country back by serving five years as an active-duty Air Force officer.

I ARRIVED at the Air Force Academy on June 23, 1969, and as a kid from rural Texas, it was an eye-opening moment to meet the other cadets, who hailed from all over the country. Yes, a few of the 1,406 young men in my entering class were wealthy boys from elite families who got there through their fathers’ connections. More were sons of military officers, some from families with long military traditions. But once all of us had made our way through long lines to get our heads shaved, it felt as if those distinctions no longer mattered. It would be the same grueling road for all of us. Only 844 of the 1,406 who arrived that day would end up graduating.

We were welcomed to the academy on a gorgeous Colorado morning when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. From that day on, I was amazed by the West. You could see for a hundred miles in any direction, and the mountains were right there—a pretty stunning sight for a boy from the flatlands of North Texas.

The academy grounds were architecturally dramatic, and at the time, the buildings were fairly new. The Air Force Academy had been completed just twelve years earlier; the first class graduated in 1959. If I made it through all four years, I’d be in the class of 1973, which would be just the fifteenth graduating class. The first female cadets wouldn’t arrive until 1976, three years after I left.

I was pretty nervous that day. I didn’t know what to expect. Unlike some new cadets, I wasn’t aware of how intense the hazing was going to be. Once we had put away our street clothes and gotten into our drab, olive-green fatigue uniforms, the upperclassmen showed up and started yelling at us.

“Stand up straight! Suck your gut in!”

“Push your chest out! Get those shoulders back and down!”

“Get those elbows in! Get your chin in, mister!”

“Keep those eyeballs caged straight ahead!”

Did it shake me up? Of course it did. At age eighteen, I lacked the life experiences to put it in perspective. I was a kid straight from my comfortable upbringing, and all of a sudden I was thrust into a situation where I didn’t know which way was up. It was disorienting.

It is natural to question the utility of such theatrics. Do I think it was necessary? I’m still not sure. But now as an adult, I do understand some of the rationale for that first-year hazing. It was designed to tear us away from the easy, the comfortable, and the familiar. It was intended to refocus our perspective and reset our priorities. For all of us, it would no longer be about “me” but about “us.” That first year began to make real what, until then, had been theoretical constructs—like duty, honor, and “service before self.” These words could no longer be thought of as abstractions. Instead they now had real meaning in real life, as in “in-your-face” reality. It’s amazing how clearly and how quickly one learns about diligence, responsibility, and accountability when the only allowable, acceptable responses to any query by a superior are “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” “No excuse, sir,” or “Sir, I do not know.”

The rule was that the upperclassmen weren’t supposed to get physical with us. But there was some jostling along with the yelling and the intimidation.

Those who argue in favor of hazing say that it builds a sense of loyalty among comrades, and there’s some truth to that. As that freshman year wore on, I felt very close to many of my fellow “doolies” (it’s a derivation of the Greek word doulos, which means “slave”). You have volunteered to fight for your country, and you feel that sense of patriotism. I have heard and read the experiences of those who saw combat, and they say when you get to the battlefield, you’re really fighting for your comrades, not some politician or political ideal. You’d rather die than let your comrades down.

My doolie year left me bonded for life with some of my fellow freshmen. It was an intense experience; it wasn’t like just going off to college. We were being tested, abused, physically challenged. And we had to watch a number of those in our ranks fall away. Some wouldn’t make it through the mental and physical challenges of basic training. Some would fail academically, or feel too intimidated by the hazing. Others would transfer to regular universities after deciding, “This is not for me. I want a good education, but not at this cost.” Those of us who endured and remained became a brotherhood.

That first summer we were sequestered at basic training, and it was the most grueling physical experience of my life. We’d have to go out on formation runs, our rifles held high above our heads, our boots slapping the ground at the same instant, and it was a real sign of weakness or failure to drop out of formation. The upperclassmen would yell: “Keep that rifle high! Don’t be a pussy. You’re letting your classmates down!”

The guys who had the most trouble were those who couldn’t run well enough. They’d get used up and have to stop. And once a cadet dropped out of formation, the upperclassmen would circle him and yell at him. It was very intense. Some men would throw up from the exertion. On rare occasions, someone would cry. Some of my classmates had fathers who were military officers; they feared they’d be disowned if they had to drop out of the academy. I felt for them. I would later wonder where they would end up, at a civilian university perhaps—someplace where you could get a good education without going through all of this.

I had grown up at sea level, and here we were, at an elevation of almost seven thousand feet. It was hard for all of us until we acclimated to the altitude. I was usually somewhere in the middle of the pack, but I held my own. I was determined to make it through the summer, and through the four years to follow.

Though I was homesick and exhausted, I did enjoy some aspects of that summer. They would break us into teams and give us physical problem-solving tests to evaluate us. We were handed a bunch of ropes and boards and, as a team, had to come up with a way to get from one side of a large enclosed cubicle to the other without touching the ground or the water below, and in a limited amount of time. The upperclassmen and officers stood there with clipboards and stopwatches, observing who had the leadership skills to get his team safely across. When it was my turn to be the leader of this exercise, I did pretty well, and that gave me confidence.

I know that summer of training helped me later. It made me realize that if I dug deep enough, I could find strength I didn’t know I had. If I hadn’t been forced to push myself that summer, I would never have known the full extent of what inner resources I had to draw upon. It wasn’t as if I was lazy as a boy. I wasn’t. But until that summer, I had never pushed myself to the limit. Those of us who made it through realized that we had achieved more than we thought we could.

WHEN SUMMER was over, the physical demands let up, but the academic demands set in. It was an extensive and difficult core curriculum. No matter your major, you had to take a large number of courses in basic sciences—electrical engineering, thermodynamics, mechanical engineering, chemistry. We also took courses in philosophy, law, and English literature. In retrospect, I am grateful for the education, but at the time, the course load felt staggering.

Luckily, for those of us who so badly wanted to fly, there were just enough perks to keep us motivated.

My first ride in a military jet was during freshman year, in a Lockheed T-33, which dated back to the late 1940s. The plane had a bubble canopy and went about five hundred miles an hour. It was typical of jets from that era; the aerodynamic technology had outpaced the propulsion technology. It was well into the 1950s before jet engines were designed to produce enough thrust to fully take advantage of the strides in aerodynamics.

So this old T-33 was underpowered. Still, it was an incredible thrill to be in it.

Each new cadet was taken for a forty-five-minute ride, and the purpose was to give us an incentive to work hard so we wouldn’t drop out of the academy.

This was the first time I’d ever worn a parachute, helmet, and oxygen mask, the first time I had ever been seated on an ejection seat. The officer piloting the plane did a roll, then headed ten miles west of Colorado Springs and flew over Pikes Peak upside down. My stomach was rock solid through all of it. I was so engaged in the moment. I was just eating it all up. I knew that, no matter what, this was what I wanted to do with my life.

When the forty-five minutes were up, of course, it was back to reality. The hazing awaited us on the ground.

We ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner in Mitchell Hall, sitting at rectangular tables of ten. Each table had a mix of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. We freshmen had to sit rigidly at attention, our backs straight, our eyes only on our plates. We had to lift our forks to our mouths in a robotic fashion, and we were not allowed to look beyond the food in front of us. We weren’t allowed to talk to one another. Only when an upperclassman addressed us, asking us a question, could we speak. They would spend mealtime quizzing us, and we had to shout out our answers.

We each had been given a book called Checkpoints, a pocketsize bound volume. We had to memorize all of this legendary lore, and especially the Code of Conduct. When upperclassmen asked us questions, there’d be hell to pay if we didn’t know the exact answers.

The Code of Conduct, established by President Eisenhower in 1955, was considered vital because during the Korean War, American POWs had been forced through torture to collaborate. The term in those days was that they’d been “brainwashed.” And so the military came up with specific rules of conduct, and we were expected to memorize them all. As future officers, for instance, we had to vow: “I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have means to resist.” We could surrender only in the face of “certain death.” We had to repeat key lines from the code: “If I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.”

Mealtime became increasingly stressful because the upperclassmen were relentless in their demands. We had to memorize the details about a great number of airplanes. We were expected to know foreign policy, American and world history, and sports scores from the day before. We had to be able to rattle off the full names of all the upperclassmen at the table, including their middle initials, and their hometowns. Now, forty years later, many of those names and middle initials remain seared into my head. I remember the hometowns, too.

The degree of harassment awaiting you at mealtime depended on your daily table assignment. Walking into the dining hall, if you saw you were seated with a kindhearted senior, you were relieved. But if one of the seniors sitting at your table was a notorious hard-ass, your heart would sink. You knew dinner would be excruciating.

In that case, you hoped for one of two things: Either another freshman cadet at your table would be so pathetically hopeless at memorization that the upperclassmen would focus on him, which meant they’d leave you alone and you could eat. Or else you hoped that one of your freshman tablemates was a genius or had a photographic memory—someone who got everything right. When upperclassmen came upon a know-it-all, they’d focus all their energies on stumping him, finding the one question he couldn’t answer, and then giving him hell for his wrong response. When that happened, the rest of us were ignored and got to eat.

THERE WAS one upperclassman, a year older than I was, who wasn’t vindictive about his hazing. But he knew exactly how to make his point.

One day, we were getting ready to march to the noon meal. It was a warm morning and we were in short sleeves. I was standing at attention, and he came up to me, asking if I thought I’d done a good job polishing my black uniform shoes.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“How confident are you?” he asked.

“Sir, I am very confident,” I answered. (I wasn’t allowed to say: “I’m very confident.” I had to say “I am.” Freshmen were prohibited from using contractions.)

This upperclassman decided to make this into a challenge. “Are you willing to match shines?” he asked. My shoes versus his.

“Yes, sir.”

He defined our rules of engagement: “If you are confident that you have a better shine than I do, and it turns out you are right, then I will make your bed tomorrow. If my shoes have a better shine, then you’ll make my bed as well as your own.”

All of us, including the upperclassmen, had to make our own beds using hospital corners. We had to pull our sheets and blankets tight enough so they wouldn’t show any wrinkles. The test was to drop a quarter on the bed. If the quarter didn’t bounce, we’d have to pull off all the bedding and start again. It was no fun. So if this upperclassman made my bed the next day, it would be wonderful.

He gave me permission to stop looking straight ahead, and to look down at my shoes and then at his. Our shoes seemed equally shiny. But I chose to be bold. “Sir, I win,” I told him.

“Well, it’s pretty close,” he responded, “but we’re not finished yet. Let’s compare the soles of our shoes.”

He stood on one foot, allowing me to see his instep, the arched middle section between the heel and the ball of the shoe. The leather on each of his insteps had been polished to a sheen. My insteps, of course, were not. He was like a good trial lawyer who never asks a question without knowing the answer. He had set me up.

“Sir, you win,” I said. He saw my lips turn into the hint of a grin, and even though doolies weren’t allowed to smile while in formation, he cut me some slack by not calling me on it.

There were plenty of other times I had to stifle my smile.

While marching in basic training, we were required to take turns counting off in cadence: “Left, left… left, right, left…”

Early on in my life, I noticed that accomplished people on TV, especially newscasters such as NBC veterans Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, enunciated perfectly and seemed to have no real accents. I tried to sound more like them, and less like some of the people in my town, who had thick Texas accents. So when it was my job to count off in cadence, I don’t think the other cadets could hear Texas in my voice.

But there was one fellow doolie, Dave, who came from West Texas—and you knew it every time he opened his mouth. Whenever he led us, he would count off in cadence: “Lay-uff, lay-uff… lay-uff, raah-yut, lay-uff…”

I’d chuckle inside, but my face remained expressionless as we marched around. “Lay-uff, lay-uff… lay-uff, raah-yut, lay-uff…”

We were truly a melting pot at the academy, and sometimes it felt like the clichéd casting in a World War II movie. We had the guy with a Polish name from Chicago, the Texan, the Jewish kid from one of the boroughs in New York, a guy from Portland, Oregon.

It’s funny, the things you remember.

When my daughter Kate entered high school in the fall of 2007, Lorrie and I went to back-to-school night, and her math teacher looked familiar to me. As he spoke, it hit me: He was two years ahead of me at the Air Force Academy. He had been one of the upperclassmen asking me mealtime questions my freshman year. So after his presentation, I walked up to him and said: “Fast, neat, average, friendly, good, good.” He looked at my face and he had a flash of recognition, too. He knew exactly what I was saying.

At the conclusion of every meal, freshmen at the end of each table had the additional duty of filling out Air Force Academy Form 0–96—the critique of the meal. It was another useless ritual. By tradition, we always filled out the form the same way. How was the service? “Fast.” What was the appearance of the waiter? “Neat.” How was the portion size? “Average.” What was the attitude of dining-room personnel? “Friendly.” How was the beverage? “Good.” And the meal? “Good.”

Kate’s math teacher and I shook hands and smiled, two older men recalling the rhythmic, long-ago language of our youth.

IN MAY of 1970, near the end of the freshman academic year, the hazing stopped, and we had what was called “The Recognition Ceremony,” formally acknowledging our new status as upperclassmen. That was the day we no longer had to address the older cadets as “sir.” We could eat in relative peace. Eventually, when it was my turn to quiz freshmen during meals, I asked questions about flying, as opposed to barking out demands for mindless memorization. I was more comfortable making it educational for the younger guys.

Despite all the regimentation, there was also a sense that your superiors and professors tacitly condoned unauthorized schemes that showed spirit or initiative. Every year, tradition dictated that the freshman class had to assert itself in some way, to prove itself worthy by coming up with antics that equaled or surpassed the stunts tried by previous freshman classes.

Our class seized on the idea of redecorating the outside of the planetarium, where cadets gathered to study astronomy. The large domed building was white like an igloo, but one day well after taps, my classmates sneaked out in the dark of night and covered the building in black plastic, sticking a number eight on the center of the dome. When the entire academy gathered for the march to breakfast, it looked like a huge eight ball. I wasn’t involved in the stunt, but I felt a nice charge that day. That and a few other stunts definitely helped our morale.

In the summer before sophomore year, we all endured survival training. We were each sent into the woods for four days without food and water. This was called SERE training, which stood for “survival, evasion, resistance, and escape.” It was designed to teach us survival skills, how to avoid being taken as prisoners of war, and how to behave if captured.

The upperclassmen dressed up like communist soldiers and came looking for us. The drama was a bit over-the-top, but it all felt like serious business. I struggled during those days, overwhelmed at times by lack of sleep and food. I was luckier than some of my classmates, because I managed to sneak into the upperclassmen’s encampment unnoticed and grab a loaf of bread and some jelly. Others went all those days without eating.

By sophomore year, I realized how much all of these experiences had helped me mature. I had been very homesick in my first six months at the academy. But when I returned home for visits, my homesickness ended. Here I was, not yet out of my teens, but I had met people from all over the world. I had done hard things I didn’t know I could do. It was as if I had become a man, and my hometown seemed so much smaller to me than I had remembered.

We hadn’t been allowed to fly an aircraft at the academy until the end of our doolie year, so when I got back to Mr. Cook’s grass strip on breaks, I was pretty rusty. I didn’t have enough flying time to really have the total mind-muscle connection that one has riding a bike. I had to get my bearings again.

Starting in my sophomore year at the academy, I got an amazing amount of flying instruction and experience. I’d get a ride down to the airfield every chance I could.

I also signed up to learn how to fly gliders. I loved flying the gliders because gliding is the purest form of flight. It’s almost birdlike. There’s no engine, it’s much quieter, and you’re operating at a slower speed, maybe sixty miles an hour. You feel every gust of wind, and so you’re aware of how light your airplane is, and how you are at the mercy of the elements.

Gliding in Colorado, I learned that the way to stay aloft longer is to carefully use the environment to your advantage. The sun heats the surface of the earth unevenly, especially in summer, and so some parts become warmer than others. The air above the warmer parts is heated and becomes less dense, so you have rising air over these areas of the earth. When you fly through a column of rising air, you can feel it lifting the airplane. If you enter a very tight turn to remain in that air, it’s like riding an elevator as long and as high as it will take you. It’s called “thermal lift,” and going from one thermal to another, you can end up soaring for hours.

In the wintertime, you have “mountain wave lift.” The winds in the air are stronger in winter, and if the wind is crossing a mountain or ridgeline, it’s like water flowing over a rock. If you stay in the rising air downwind of the mountain, you can remain aloft for long periods.

While I was at the academy, in addition to all the hours spent in gliders, I got my flight instructor certificate. I began to teach other cadets, including a dozen friends, how to fly both airplanes and gliders.

Because I had so much experience, when I graduated from the academy in 1973, I was named “Outstanding Cadet in Airmanship.” It was an honor that came because I’d been tenacious in honing my skills through all those hours in the skies.

THE AIR Force Academy gave me an education on many fronts—about human nature, about what it means to be a well-rounded person, and about working harder than I’d thought possible. On campus, the education we received was called “The Whole Man Concept,” because our superiors weren’t just teaching us about the military. They wanted us to have great strength of character, to be informed about all sorts of matters we might easily dismiss, and to find ways to make vital contributions to the world beyond the academy. We cadets often dismissed it as “The Manhole Concept,” but in our hearts we knew we were held to high standards and difficult tests that would serve us well.

It seemed almost as if the goal was to prepare each cadet to be chief of staff for the Air Force. Only one of my classmates, Norton Schwartz, actually made it; he was appointed to the highest-ranking Air Force job in August 2008. But many of the rest of us did OK, too, in our own way, graduating into the world beyond the academy with a full set of skills and a high sense of duty.

Fast, neat, average, friendly, good, good.