Pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger said that writing an opinion piece last week urging voters to cast ballots for candidates who will unite and protect the country was freeing, necessary, useful, and his duty.
“How could I not? I felt an intense obligation to act, not just to watch, to put my voice out there, to vote, to try to make a difference,” Sullenberger said during an interview with MSNBC late Saturday.
Sullenberger, now retired, was the pilot who saved the lives of all 155 people aboard US Airways Flight 1549 in 2009 by landing the plane safely in Hudson River off Manhattan after a bird damaged both the plane’s engines.
The lifelong Republican wrote in the Washington Post last week that he would be “voting for leaders committed to rebuilding our common values and not pandering to our basest impulses” in the 2018 midterm elections.
Though he did not address President Trump by name in the op-ed, Sullenberger on Saturday said Trump was “remarkably incurious and doesn’t value learning.”
“I don’t think he’s either capable or willing to change,” he said. “Instead of talking to the current occupant of that office, I am talking to the American people. I’m saying, you are the ultimate check and balance. It is up to us. As I said in my piece, we cannot wait for someone to rescue us, we must do it ourselves. Everyone, everywhere, must vote in massive numbers.”
The story of Sullenberger’s Hudson River landing in 2009 was turned into a 2016 movie titled “Sully,” starring Tom Hanks as the captain. He also wrote a 2012 book about American leadership called Making a Difference: Stories of Vision and Courage from America’s Leaders.
