Don’t sully your good name by creating a battle you cannot win

You put your head above this parapet, you’re going to create a story that doesn’t currently exist, writes Terry Prone.

YOU remember the photographs. If you saw them, you could never forget them. Most of them were head-on, cockpit-first shots, showing an enormous plane sitting in the river Hudson, its two great wings covered in passengers. Also in the picture are boats settling to rescue the passengers. Those on the wing closest to the boats are lined up, facing the vessels, apparently as orderly and unbothered as if they were queueing for a cup of coffee.

The captions, when the picture went around the world following the 15th of January, 2009 drama, talked of the Miracle on the Hudson, and the world quickly came to know the name of the miracle worker, pilot Captain Chesley Sullenberger III, and his nickname, Sully. What a guy, went the reaction. One minute, he’s lifting his US Airways Airbus A320 in a normal takeoff out of La Guardia airport, and the next, the two great jet engines have ingested half a flock of geese each and flamed out, leaving Sullenberger without power.