Sully: liked it.

gismo said:
If you find yourself in a hurry to see it before it appears on NtFx you could always do a $100 movie flight to a nearby airport with a crew car and a theater nearby. :cool: Or just wait a bit and watch it on your new HDTV.
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Heh. I've actually done that, flew to Cleveland about 12 years ago to catch a movie that I really wanted to see on the big screen, and which had come and gone in the space of a week in Detroit. (Well, and it was a good excuse to fly! ;)) Couldn't do it now though even if I were so inclined, as I'm medically grounded for the moment.
 
gismo said:
My wife commented that the movie would have been just as good on our TV and I agree with her. Even more amazing is that one of the local theaters was showing it at a higher price in iMax which IMO would be a total waste of money. I wanted to see it while it was fresh, otherwise I would have waited to see it on TV in a couple months.
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The big plus to IMAX is the sound system installed at those theaters. If you like movie sound, there's no better.

And that's why I originally said we really enjoyed it at an IMAX theater, because the Foley work is excellent. I rarely see movies in theaters. I have a monster TV at home and a good sound system that can shake the house. But I can't compete with IMAX for sheer immersion.
 
This is the same NTSB that would likely find a situation where a landing airplane experienced an earthquake happening during landing, falling into an opening like a 40 ft wide crack in the earth as "Pilots inability to maintain proper directional control on roll out" right?

Wouldn't surprise me if they tried to hang Sully. The NTSB is very "pilot error" biased.
 
I saw the accident sequence on the big screen in a preview, which was what made me decide I wasn't interested in the movie. Especially when the part I didn't see (the investigation) is a made-up story. I'm obviously standing alone on that point, though, based on the reviews I've read here.
 
I saw it on Friday - I thought it was good...not great, but good.
 
Greg Bockelman said:
Except they didn't. That investigation was closed a long time ago. And I don't hold your same opinion.
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So you think that a wind gust occurring right at touchdown causing the plane to veer off the runway is always pilot error?

Because the NTSB does. Every time.
 
SkyHog said:
So you think that a wind gust occurring right at touchdown causing the plane to veer off the runway is always pilot error?

Because the NTSB does. Every time.
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Always? 99% of the time I would say yes. There will always be extremes that fall outside of the norm but a pilot is expected to have the skill to deal with those situations or the judgement to avoid them.

Besides, loss of control on a crosswind landing probably does not comprise a huge number of NTSB reports so you need to make a better argument than that.
 
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SkyHog said:
Wouldn't surprise me if they tried to hang Sully. The NTSB is very "pilot error" biased.
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From my reading of the transcripts, they didn't appear to. They commended him on being one of the only pilots they ever got to meet alive during an investigation.

As far as "pilot error" goes, it looks fairly justified to me in most NTSB reports that I've read. That shoe fits more often than it doesn't.

Your "wind gust" example was pretty poor. It's really rare for such a gust to come from nothing. Either a large weather system or an isolated storm, either way, you're supposed to know how to check for such things and know how to handle them, or have a plan to land somewhere else where the conditions aren't occurring.

And that's from someone who was microbursted all the way to the runway not once, but twice. We knew there were thunderstorms 20-25 miles west. And we knew it had happened once. So we went up and did it again. Stupid.

We survived but not by exercising our excellent weather observation skills that day, for sure. If we'd have ended up 100' short and broke the airplane, we'd have deserved our "pilot error" in the accident report.

Can you give solid examples of where something wasn't "pilot error" in a large number of accident findings, but was called such?
 
A few observations:
My wife and I really liked the movie. My wife hates aviation movies, and she really liked the movie.

Salt and tides played a really big part in the miracle. The tide was coming in at that time in the afternoon.
If that plane had gone down north of the GW Bridge, many of those people would have died.
If that plane had gone down north of the Tappan Zee Bridge, maybe all of them would have died.
If the plane had gone down north of the Bear Mountain Bridge, it was a sure thing they would all be dead.
There is absolutely no infrastructure, no boats in the water, to rescue anyone north of the GW.
The farther north you go, the less salt there is in the water. Less salt, more ice.
North of the Tappan Zee, and especially north of the Bear Mountain Bridge there was ice in the river of sufficient quantity and thickness to destroy the plane when it hit.
The tide was significant because it was pushing salt water up the Hudson, also pushing ice back up the Hudson, and causing it to melt.

The what, why, where, when and who of this event aligned perfectly, and that was miraculous.
 
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denverpilot said:
Can you give solid examples of where something wasn't "pilot error" in a large number of accident findings, but was called such?
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I just picked a random month. It's harder to find examples where a pilot was not found at fault for fairly specious cause:

http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief.aspx?ev_id=20140304X32328&key=1 - unexpected wind gust

http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief.aspx?ev_id=20140311X43334&key=1 - taking off on frozen lake

http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief.aspx?ev_id=20140309X03824&key=1 - parachuter drops in front of plane on final, pilot blamed for not "seeing and avoiding" the meat bomb

http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief.aspx?ev_id=20140324X84629&key=1 - during rollout, wind shifts to quartering tailwind.

There's a lot more. Try to find some where an unexpected and unplannable gust is not called pilot error.

Also, non scientifically, most of the reports are wind gust related. It's probably the most common cause of incident.
 
Failure to handle a gust is absolutely pilot error...


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Greg Bockelman said:
Not sure what you are trying to prove, Nick.
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That the NTSB will hang pilot error on everything unless proven otherwise. It is their default position and therefore, they are heavily biased toward oilot error. And as a result, whether they did Sully dirty or not, I could see them doing it because their behavior slants that way.

Nothing more.
 
I liked it. I didn't find the portrayal of the NTSB as adversarial as being too bad. But then again, I went in knowing to discount that bit. Unfortunately, however, it is really unfair to the NTSB who overall are very thorough and driven by the facts. They're human too but still they do a great job. Not everyone knows that NTSB wasn't really out to get him as it seemed.

But I can believe that in the early few days Sully could have been second guessing his decision - even knowing that it was the right one. I would have. That part hit home with me. But also the reenactment of the event was very realistic and my heart was pounding even though I knew how it all ended. Very good flick for sure.

I think some of the flying scenes are great on a big screen with huge sound because it's more immersive, I know some of us have pretty epic home theaters too.

I went to a weekday matinee and I am 75% certain that about 50% of the 6-odd people in there were pilots. They were nodding or shaking their heads at all the right points.

It was a fantastic example of a pilot in command and I'm glad they put it on the big screen. Sully deserves it.
 
Just saw it.

The movie is named after him not just because he's the star but because the entire drama unfolds from his POV. It would not surprise me in the least considering the stress of the ordeal that it felt like the NTSB was taking an adversarial role and accusing him of something. Heck, in the movie, the Sully character even hallucinated a TV reporter calling him a fraud.

While the real-life NTSB was complimentary of the crew's actions in the final report, who knows what twists and turns the investigation took to arrive at that conclusion. When taken in combination with what I wrote above, I believe the dramatic license taken with the NTSB investigation does not detract significantly from the film.
 
Watched it last night on Bluray. Solid performances but didn't think it was all that great. I think if they would have gone into Sully's past glider experiences and developed that history a little more, it would have helped. Of course the NTSB side was exaggerated greatly. ATC depiction looked pretty accurate for a radar room built from essentially scratch. Old ATC bud of mine was an extra in the background as well. Not sure if the breathalyzer/ urine sample was actually ordered for the controller. Unless they've changed post accident procedures, we never got checked unless we were suspicious of contributing towards the accident. Nothing I see here was even remotely on the controller.

Overall entertaining but could have developed the story a little more and not ended so soon at 1:28.
 
Velocity173 said:
Not sure if the breathalyzer/ urine sample was actually ordered for the controller. Unless they've changed post accident procedures, we never got checked unless we were suspicious of contributing towards the accident. Nothing I see here was even remotely on the controller.
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What? Didn't you hear on the tapes where he vectored the geese directly into the airbus?
 
SkyDog58 said:
What? Didn't you hear on the tapes where he vectored the geese directly into the airbus?
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I knew something was fishy about that. You don't hit that many geese without some kind of inside job. Probably talking to lead goose on a secure freq or something.
 
Velocity173 said:
I knew something was fishy about that. You don't hit that many geese without some kind of inside job. Probably talking to lead goose on a secure freq or something.
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Exactly! I'm not sure what the exact frequency is but I do know it includes a bunch of goose eggs.
 
EppyGA said:
Had eleven of my EAA Chapter members go see it tonight. We enjoyed it. One of our locals did the flying in the scene of a young Sully flying in the Stearman.

http://www.peachstateaero.com/
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A sad note, the gentleman that did the Stearman flying for the movie was killed back in November in a 1917 Jenny while taking an FAA dude for a ride.
 
dmspilot said:
While the real-life NTSB was complimentary of the crew's actions in the final report, who knows what twists and turns the investigation took to arrive at that conclusion.
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The people who were there (and have been interviewed at length) and the public transcripts showing hundreds of hours of non-adversarial behavior.
 
Plus TV interviews with both pilots where they said sure the process is inherently intimidating, but that it was professional with no attempt to blame them.

What bothered me about the film is this seemed to be the director editorializing on his ideas (and others) that no government is good government. Which is a shame because our NTSB is a very successful and well regarded institution.


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Just finished watching it myself. I was pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed it.
 
gsengle said:
Plus TV interviews with both pilots where they said sure the process is inherently intimidating, but that it was professional with no attempt to blame them.

What bothered me about the film is this seemed to be the director editorializing on his ideas (and others) that no government is good government. Which is a shame because our NTSB is a very successful and well regarded institution.


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I didn't think it was about his thoughts on government, but more on creating drama to sell more tickets.
 
gsengle said:
What bothered me about the film is this seemed to be the director editorializing on his ideas (and others) that no government is good government. Which is a shame because our NTSB is a very successful and well regarded institution.
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In interviews he said it was actually intended to show the man/machine interface of automation (and telemetry for second guessing later) over experience. I felt he missed the mark at least a little bit of that if that's what he intended to portray. But it does explain the completely fake scene with the live videoconference with the sim pilots.
 
I've just started to read the book, only a few pages in but it looks like it's going to be an interesting read.

I'll see the movie when I get around to it.
 
I saw the movie last night. Overall, I liked it. The only thing that was a little off was how it ended. It just felt incomplete, like there was more to say. I dunno.
 
orange said:
I saw the movie last night. Overall, I liked it. The only thing that was a little off was how it ended. It just felt incomplete, like there was more to say. I dunno.
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Kinda hard to finish up the movie with, "I've got a
Ghost Writer lined up to write a book that'll be turned into this movie, and you're off to EAA to do some cool stuff and fly the B-17..." ;)
 
I just watched it last night and really liked it as well.

On a side note, I was one of the last people to ever deice N106US. The day of the crash, it flew MSP-CLT, before flying CLT-LGA-Hudson River. I deiced it that morning in MSP
 
I saw it on Apple TV last night for the first time. If the NTSB had truthfully been that adversarial then they deserve the depiction that they got. I wanted to punch that fat bald guy right in the face.
 
orange said:
I saw the movie last night. Overall, I liked it. The only thing that was a little off was how it ended. It just felt incomplete, like there was more to say. I dunno.
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Well, he is now doing the lecture circuit.

For Christmas, wife gave me tickets to see him speak here in Norfolk in a couple weeks.
 
Art VanDelay said:
I saw it on Apple TV last night for the first time. If the NTSB had truthfully been that adversarial then they deserve the depiction that they got. I wanted to punch that fat bald guy right in the face.
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They weren't. The NTSB stuff was in large part fiction.


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