REEL FACE: | REAL FACE: |
Tom Hanks
Born: July 9, 1956 Birthplace: Concord, California, USA | Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger
Born: January 23, 1951 Birthplace: Denison, Texas, USA Bio: Captain/Pilot |
Aaron Eckhart
Born: March 12, 1968 Birthplace: Cupertino, California, USA | Jeff Skiles
Born: November 18, 1959 Birthplace: Oregon, Wisconsin, USA Bio: First Officer/Co-Pilot |
Laura Linney
Born: February 5, 1964 Birthplace: New York City, New York, USA | Lorraine Sullenberger
Born: August 7, 1958 Bio: Pilot's Wife |
Holt McCallany
Born: September 3, 1963 Birthplace: New York City, New York, USA | Mike Cleary
Bio: US Airline Pilots Association President |
Molly Hagan
Born: August 3, 1961 Birthplace: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA | Doreen Welsh
Born: September 1, 1952 Birthplace: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA Bio: Flight Attendant |
Jane Gabbert
Birthplace: Wichita, Kansas, USA | Sheila Dail
Bio: Flight Attendant |
Ann Cusack
Born: May 22, 1961 Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York, USA | Donna Dent
Bio: Flight Attendant |
Autumn Reeser
Born: September 21, 1980 Birthplace: La Jolla, California, USA | Tess Sosa
Bio: Passenger with Baby |
Sam Huntington
Born: April 1, 1982 Birthplace: Peterborough, New Hampshire, USA | Jeff Kolodjay
Birthplace: Massachusetts, USA Bio: Passenger |
Christopher Curry
Born: October 22, 1948 Birthplace: Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA | Rob Kolodjay
Birthplace: Massachusetts, USA Bio: Passenger |
Patch Darragh
Birthplace: Toronto, Ontario, Canada | Patrick Harten
Born: January 26, 1974 Birthplace: New York, USA Bio: Air Traffic Controller |
Vince Lombardi
Born: December 7, 1976 Birthplace: Montclair, New Jersey, USA (Portrays Himself) | Vince Lombardi
Born: December 7, 1976 Birthplace: Montclair, New Jersey, USA Bio: Ferry Boat Captain |
"...for 42 years, I've been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience, education and training. And on January 15 the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal," Sullenberger told 60 Minutes. In researching the Sully true story, we discovered that he learned to fly at age 16 in a Aeronca 7DC, taking off from an airstrip near his home. He entered the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1969 and was ranked his class's top flyer at graduation. He served as a fighter pilot in the Air Force between 1975 and 1979. He reached the rank of captain and served as a training officer, flight leader, and was a member of an aircraft accident investigation board. Sullenberger worked as a pilot for US Airways between 1980 and 2010. In 2007, he founded the consulting firm Safety Reliability Methods, which has assisted the NTSB in investigating several plane crashes. -TheObserver.com
The plane, which was bound for Charlotte, North Carolina, was in the air for approximately five minutes and twenty seconds after taking off from New York City's LaGuardia Airport and crash landing in the Hudson River. There were 208 seconds from when the US Airways Flight 1549 jet sucked geese into its engines at 2,818 feet above LaGuardia to the moment when Sully brought the craft down onto the Hudson (NYPost.com). While gliding, Captain Sully circled once over the Hudson River to help the passengers prepare for the water landing. "It was very quiet as we worked, my co-pilot and I. We were a team," the real Sullenberger recalled. "But to have zero thrust coming out of those engines was shocking - the silence" (TheObserver).
Yes. Technically, it was a controlled water landing, as Tom Hanks' character emphasizes in the movie. The Coast Guard released a Miracle on the Hudson crash landing video that shows the plane descending into the Hudson River at 3:31pm on January 15, 2009. Watch the Sully crash landing video. US Airways Flight 1549 becomes visible on the left side of the screen just after the 2:00 minute mark of the video. The camera zooms in on the plane, which is seen floating downriver in the frigid water as the survivors step out onto the wings. "Hitting the water is hard," the real Sully told 60 Minutes anchor Katie Couric, who plays herself in the Sully movie. "It was a hard landing, and then we scooted along the surface for some point and then at some point the nose finally did come down as the speed decreased, and then we turned slightly to the left and stopped."
Yes, either that or perish from hypothermia in the freezing water of the Hudson River. Survivor Barry Leonard actually thought they were under water since that was all he could see out the window. As water came in and the back of the plane began to sink, the passengers feared the worst and began using their cell phones to call their loved ones as they scrambled for a way out of the plane. "People were actually climbing over seats to get out," says Rob Kolodjay, a retired postal worker who was on Flight 1549 with his son Jeff. -Miracle of the Hudson Plane Crash documentary
Yes. The first boat to come to the aid of the sinking airliner was the ferry The Thomas Jefferson, which was part of the Hudson's commuter ferry services and was the closest vessel that could assist. It took approximately four minutes for ferry captain Vincent Lombardi to reach the floating plane. The ferry was not a rescue boat and its decks were nearly seven feet above the water, too high for the passengers to easily climb aboard. The ferry's crew used nets and rope ladders to help the survivors onto the boat. More ferry boats and a smaller Coast Guard vessel arrived to help pull people from the fuel-slick wings of the plane and the freezing water of the Hudson. The NYPD's scuba team came on the scene via helicopter, focusing on survivors struggling to stay afloat in the freezing water. Captain Sully was the last survivor to board a ferry. -Miracle of the Hudson Plane Crash documentary
Yes. "My knee hit my sternum and actually cracked my sternum," says survivor Barry Leonard (Miracle of the Hudson Plane Crash documentary). 78 people were treated for injuries. Most were minor, such as hypothermia, but five were severe, including a deep L-shaped laceration to flight attendant Doreen Welsh's leg (depicted in the movie).
Not exactly. At the time, Sully expressed very little doubt with regard to his decision. The public instantly and unequivocally anointed him a hero and super-saint. The movie poses that Sully was privately tormented and wrought with guilt, especially after the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) questioned his decision (which they did). "When was your last drink, Captain Sullenberger? Have you had any troubles at home?" they ask Tom Hanks' character. "Simulations show that you could make it back to the airport," another gripes. In real life, this process was far more drawn out and largely benign, as most such questions were routine.
Director Clint Eastwood is known for depicting tortured heroes (see American Sniper). Adding controversy and personal drama to the story certainly helps to fill in the time around the three-minute water landing. The Sully movie was based on Chesley Sullenberger's book Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters, which is thought to have netted the retired pilot a healthy six figures. How much personal drama was injected or heightened for the story is hard to say, but Sullenberger himself stands by the film. "The story being told came from my experiences, and reflects the many challenges that I faced and successfully overcame both during and after the flight," he said in a statement passed along by Warner Bros. -NYPost.com
Yes. During our investigation into the Sully movie true story, we learned that Captain Sullenberger and his family were being hurried around the country for interviews and events. "Early on there was some contention between us," Sully's wife Lorraine told the Oprah Winfrey Network, "because I said, 'This is going to kill us, I mean literally kill us. We can't do it all. I don't care who it is or what it is, we need to manage it better.'"
Yes, but mainly only when the "human factor" was omitted. Several months after the ditching, nearly two dozen emergency simulations were flown at the Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, France. Four out of four simulations were successful when the pilots returned to the closest LaGuardia runway. However, in the simulations the decision to turn back was made immediately after the engines blew. The simulated scenarios didn't account for the "human factor," essentially the 30 seconds it took to decide what to do. Nine more simulated attempts to land at LaGuardia were conducted, taking into account the human factor and variables like landing at a different LaGuardia runway or landing with the plane more severely disabled. Only three of those attempts were successful. In the end, the FAA agreed with what Sullenberger stated in his book, "I had to be certain we could make it," he wrote, because "it would rule out every other option" and could kill "who knows how many people on the ground." There was no guarantee that the 70-ton glider would clear Manhattan's skyline. -The Wall Street Journal
It took 15 months before federal crash investigators concluded that Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and co-pilot Jeff Skiles made the right decision to ditch the plane in the Hudson River (The Wall Street Journal). That time frame is significantly condensed for the movie. "Until I read the script, I didn't know the investigative board was trying to paint the picture that [Sully] had done the wrong thing," said director Clint Eastwood. "They were kind of railroading him into [believing it was his] fault, and that wasn't the case at all" (EW.com).
Of the survivors interviewed, most have expressed support for the movie. Baltimore lawyer James Hanks (no relation to the movie's star), 73, called the trailer a "fascinating inside look at how Sully saved all 155 of us, plus an unknown number of additional lives yet to be born to those on board." "It's accurate, pretty spot-on," said banker Ricardo Valeriano, 45, of Charlotte, North Carolina, who walked away from the flight he calls "a surreal moment, a bad dream." Another passenger expressed "mixed feelings" after watching the trailer. -NYDailyNews.com
Yes. The real Sully and his wife Lorraine have two daughters, Kelly and Kate (pictured below), who were 14 and 16 at the time of the 2009 Miracle on the Hudson.
Yes. While exploring the Sully true story, we learned that a vintage WWII fighter plane crashed into the Hudson River in May 2016, killing pilot Bill Gordon. The cause was most likely mechanical failure (NYPost.com). With regard to commercial airlines crashing into U.S. rivers, on January 13, 1982, Air Florida Flight 90, a Boeing 737, crashed into the frozen Potomac River after taking off from Washington National Airport in Virginia. Only five people on board survived. 74 on the plane and four on the ground died, including one initial survivor who perished after making sure that the other crash survivors were rescued. In 1984, a popular TV movie was made about the Potomac crash, titled Flight 90: Disaster on the Potomac.
Yes. Clint Eastwood had been involved in an emergency water landing when he was in the military as a young man. "I've been involved in a water landing before," he acknowledged when asked by Katie Couric. "Well, it was an exciting moment for a 21-year-old kid, but I was riding in the back of a military plane as a passenger, a free flight deal. Coming down the Pacific Coast from Seattle to San Francisco, we went in the ocean off of Point Reyes, California. It was a good water landing, much like Sully did. The plane didn't float though. We had about 30 seconds to get out of it, on the wing, and the water was coming up. The pilot said, 'What do you think?' I said, 'I guess we're going swimming.'" They got in the cold November water and swam for the shore, surviving the ditching. -Katie Couric Facebook Live Interview
Watch Miracle on the Hudson footage, including Sully's water landing and the subsequent rescue. Then view a Captain Sully interview and a documentary that includes remarks from some of the Flight 1549 passengers.