Yes, God was his co-pilot that frigid day in New York City. Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger III is rightfully crowned the hero of the day after he expertly glided the engines-out Airbus A320 jet down to a perfect water landing in the chilly Hudson River, where all of the passengers were able to miraculously escape alive. Any number of other variables could have determined a much more gruesome outcome. If the flight was at night, most certainly there would have been fatalities, probably due to a magnified sense of panic leading to death by drowning or hypothermia. Or who knows if the pilot, a decorated veteran of commercial and military aviation, who fortuitously even had glider-flying experience, would have been able to time the landing right in the dark–one miscalculation and the landing could have resulted in the break-up of the fuselage in the frigid waters. Or what if the pilot tried to go for it and land at Teterboro Airport in North Jersey, only to fall far short in some swanky, Sopranos-like suburb.
Well, these scenarios are moot of course, and along with the media, it all ignores the greatest tragedy of the day: the death of dozens of innocent birds, who were wrongly accused of causing this near-disaster. "Birdstrike!" they glibly say, was to blame. Birdstrike–as if the birds planned all this; as if they were some Al Qaeda sleeper cell of islamic Canadian Geese who struck their target with the precision of a shoulder-fired Stinger missile. In fact these poor geese were the unwilling victims in the whole affair. With visions of Florida in their tiny brains, they thought they were on their way to a long winter of grazing and pooping on unfrozen golf courses across the Sunshine State. Instead they were cuisinarted, atomized, and finally, unfairly blamed for their own blood-and-feathers fate. Where is the Audobon Society? Where is the Friends of Waterfowl Avoiding Aircraft Collisions (FWAAC!)? Where are the morally-upright people of Canada, standing up for their national geese?
What I hope is that I can start a national debate on the efficacy of the term "birdstrike." It's as neutered, insidious and unjust a euphemism as "collateral damage" or "post-traumatic stress disorder." Then perhaps we can start recognizing the senseless tragedies of these birdkills going on all the time thanks to our lust for air travel. Otherwise, we will all have bird blood on our boarding passes.
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