Sully's hypermiling made him a better pilot (Flight 1549 / Hudson River, 2009)
 

Remember this?


https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1536368275

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549

I just read the pilot's book, Sully: My Search for What Really Matters (the movie's also on Netflix).

Good read. One thing that jumped out at me is how into efficiency and smoothness he is as a pilot. His wife calls it his love of "the art of the airplane."

He likes striving to perfect "coasting" into landings when he has no following traffic. From chapter 8:

Reminds me (in a very small way) of the satisfaction of a perfectly timed neutral coast in a car, that comes to a halt exactly where it needs to without touching the brakes.

I wonder what kind of a driver he is. I know of a glider pilot / gearhead who got a Prius because he has an innate interest in optimizing his energy usage, and he appreciates the efficiency-oriented design of the car.

After the Hudson landing, a lot of people speculated that Sully's early training in gliders prepared him for what happened when the Airbus lost its engines, but he disagreed, saying instead it was his focus on "efficiency":

(Chapter 13.)

Cool!

I'd love to experience one of Sullys well-executed descent / landings. When I think back to final approaches on flights I've taken, the pilots always seem to be throttling the engines up & down as the plane gets close to the runway. Surge, surge, surge...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny9q0KM3Ca8

There's a man after my own heart. I'd surely buy Sully a beer if I ever ran into him.

Efficient driving saves a little fuel, but efficient flying can save tons. I'm actually surprised landings aren't automated. I know a lot of approaches and initial descents are.

That's fascinating and if nothing else shows a man very in tune with the machine he's at the controls of. That could be a race car driver or a hypermiler, and either way, a good person to have at the controls.

Traditionally, planes had to fly stepped down approaches:
Descend, hold altitude, descend further, hold, ...
Every altitude hold costs fuel as the descent has to be stopped.

Nowadays, they're changing over to continuous descent approaches, which means less throttle-jockeying and less fuel burnt.

Autolanding systems vary throttles as well to hold speed / descent rate.