Honesty and humility are in very short supply these days, and self aggrandizement seems to be most common among those commoners who would pretend to be heroes. This book, though, is about real heroes, about those who go to work every day and practice their craft with an unswerving dedication to perform their jobs and discharge their responsibilities with the highest possible skill and integrity.
It is rare to see an author bare his soul in the ways that Captain Sullenberger recounts his doubts and self-perceived personal shortcomings. He shares intimate details about his boyhood and his relationship with his father that perhaps would not be necessary if all we were looking for were the details of the fateful splashdown in the Hudson River. We learn quickly, however, that Sullenburger is comfortable talking about his wife and their sometimes challenged marriage, about their adopted girls and about an airline that has not always treated its pilots with dignity and respect in recent years. Surprisingly, he recounts these revelations without neither rancor nor accusation. His recollections about the deaths of fellow military pilots is so matter-of-fact that we come to understand that this pilot had faced danger and death throughout his career. What Sullenberger and first officer Skiles accomplished on that January day that vaulted them into international prominence was, in fact, the culmination of their collective experience and the execution of the responsibilities they had trained all of their lives to perform.
It takes nearly 200 pages for the captain to bring us to that day when they left LaGuardia on what should have been just one more in a series of hundreds of routine flights. By the time we enter the Airbus cockpit with the crew, we can almost sense that even the loss of both engines on takeoff is not more than what these two have been trained both to manage and survive. That's the core message: have a routine, follow the procedures, maintain equanimity no matter what the circumstances, and the tragic, the profane, the impossible all coalesce to make sense in an indescribable way. The message of Highest Duty is that, in taking the mundane seriously, and by performing the most routine, repetitive tasks by the book to the letter of one's training and experience, that near tragic events become just part of the habitual. "Oh, we hit birds? And the engines have stopped? And we are perilously close to the ground?" Sullenberger's answer to imminent danger and death is to do the procedures he was trained to do, to fly the airplane with exquisite coordination that enlisted all of the substantial and significant skills of both himself and his first officer, to make lightning fast judgments, and never to think of the consequences of all of it until 152 passengers and crew were safe and accounted for.
What Sullenberger does with literary skill that is nearly as adroit as his flying is to let us see all of these processes and all of these events from within his clear and focused mind that spent 30 years preparing for the most important day of his life that he could neither anticipate nor predict. He really does let us see him think, and such insight and clarity are rare indeed. Neither his personal life, nor his military academy training, nor his military flying experience, nor his airline recurrent training alone could have prepared him for that day when his decisions determined the fate of 151 others, but all of it together made the successful outcome possible. And he shows us just how all of his life's experiences came to a pinnacle on that one day. He makes us see, almost unintentionally at one level, how a successful outcome was never in doubt, but seldom have there been three and a half more uncertain minutes in the history of modern aviation. Sullenberger's writing brings us into not only the cockpit but also into the soul of his flying and his personality. Because of this intimacy, it is one of the best aviation narratives ever written.
Sullenberger shows us not only what he thought and what he did but also how and why the 57 years of his life that led up to those historic moments made it very likely he would act in the way he did. Other pilots might have been equally successful given similar circumstances, but he shows us why his way of approaching his duties as an aviator made it very likely that he was going to succeed on that day. He shows us how the heroic can even appear to be commonplace when a confident professional simply does the job that he believes it is his highest calling to perform. He shows grace and humility, trust and faith, and, most importantly, supreme competence without a trace of pretence. It is the stuff that makes true heroes.
The book makes us admire, love and respect both Captain Sullenberger and First Officer Skiles as well as the flight attendants and air traffic controllers who all performed their jobs exactly as they should have been done because they were committed to excellence and not because they sought fame and glory. It is a great read written clearly and accurately with enough information for the aviation wonks who want all of the technical details. At its core, however, is a real tale about a dedicated professional who simply did what he was trained to do with dedication and commitment on one day as he had done every day in his flying career. It is a look at greatness in a plain, navy blue suit that is as rare as any tale of courage that has yet been recounted, and yet it is as familiar as the neighbor next door who goes to work and comes home day after day, year after year, without fanfare or recognition. It is a tale for the ages.
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