Sully: Pilot Pay Cuts Put Planes In Peril

The pilot who safely ditched a jetliner in New York's Hudson River said Tuesday that pay and benefit cuts are driving experienced pilots from careers in the cockpit.

US Airways pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger told the House aviation subcommittee that his pay has been cut 40 percent in recent years and his pension has been terminated and replaced with a promise "worth pennies on the dollar" from the federally created Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. These cuts followed a wave of airline bankruptcies after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks compounded by the current recession, he said.

The reduced compensation has placed "pilots and their families in an untenable financial situation," Sullenberger said. "I do not know a single, professional airline pilot who wants his or her children to follow in their footsteps."

The subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee heard from the crew of Flight 1549, the air traffic controller who handled the flight and aviation experts to examine what safety lessons could be learned from the Jan. 15 accident.

Sullenberger and other crew members testified about the accident in which all 155 people aboard Flight 1549 survived.

Sullenberger's copilot Jeffrey B. Skiles said unless there are labor-management reforms "experienced crews in the cockpit will be a thing of the past." And Sullenberger added that without experienced pilots "we will see negative consequences to the flying public."

The air traffic controller who handled Flight 1549 said thought he was hearing a death sentence when Sullenberger radioed that he was ditching in the Hudson.

"I believed at that moment I was going to be the last person to talk to anyone on that plane alive," controller Patrick Harten testified in his first public description of his reactions to last month's miracle landing.

"People don't survive landings on the Hudson River. I thought it was his own death sentence," the 10-year veteran controller testified.

But Sullenberger glided the Airbus A320 into the river after it collided with birds and lost power in both engines. All 155 people aboard survived.

The crew and passengers of a helicopter that crashed en route to an oil platform on Jan. 4 weren't as lucky. The National Transportation Safety Board reported Monday that investigators have found evidence birds were involved in the accident near Morgan City, La., that killed eight of nine people aboard.