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Capt. Sully Sullenberger, the hero pilot who famously landed a plane on New York’s Hudson River without losing a single passenger in 2009, touted how “exceptionally safe” aviation has become — but admitted that “everything is harder at night” in a new interview.
While flying today is “exceptionally safe,” he told the New York Times Thursday, that this tragedy has a lesson to be learned about maintaining vigilance.
“We’ve had to learn important lessons literally with blood too often, and we had finally gotten beyond that, to where we could learn from incidents, and not accidents,” the 74-year-old told the Times.
America’s favorite pilot went on to say that the conditions when an American Airlines flight carrying 64 people collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter with three soldiers on board over Washington, DC, posed some simple, but serious challenges.
“Nighttime always makes things different about seeing other aircraft — basically all you can do is see the lights on them,” Sullenberger explained.
“You have to try to figure out: Are they above you or below you? Or how far away? Or which direction are they headed,” he told the Gray Lady.
“Everything is harder at night.”
Sullenberger added that he believed the ground lights over the water could have “made it a little bit harder to see,” but added he was speculating.
He added that the design of Reagan National Airport requires additional training for pilots who operate there.
The airport, which was built in the late 1930s, has shorter runways than other airports and routinely experiences heavy plane traffic.
“It hasn’t changed much since [the 1930s],” Sullenberger told the outlet. “Of course, we’ve added technology to it. But a lof of the technology is old.”
Follow The Post’s coverage of the American Airlines jet’s collision with a military helicopter in DC
The crash involving American Airlines Flight 5342 and a Black Hawk military helicopter resulted in the deaths of all 67 passengers and crew members aboard both aircraft.
The plane, which was split in half by the impact, and the chopper crashed into the icy Potomac River Wednesday night.
Recovery teams continued to work into Friday morning to recover bodies and debris that were strewn across the Washington waterway.
Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday night recovered black boxes from the plane and will review the cockpit and flight data recorders at a lab.
