Slater vs. Sully: Sizing Up Two Air Men in a Crisis – City Room …

Consider the two air men.

One of them survived a double bird strike. the other double-fisted beers on his way down an inflatable slide.

One of them basked in the worship of a grateful nation. the other spent a night in jail and seems destined to face many years of fist-pumps and calls of “Right on, dude!”

One was old school, the other a hothead rebel. Gary Cooper and Carrot Top.

Men these days are judged not by the way they board an airplane, but by the way they get off the darn thing when the going gets tough, and it is with this crude scale we examine the two airline professionals who became household names in our town. and in doing so, we examine ourselves, and we ask a tough question:

Am I a Sully? or am I a Slater?

Neither took much time to answer, when each was asked in different ways. Captain Sullenberger didn’t know he was — insert quotation marks in the air — Sully until a load of mixed-up birds departed this life inside a plane’s engines, of all places, on a frigid January afternoon. he looked inside himself and found some superhuman reserve of calm, his voice betraying nary a crack as he helpfully told an air-traffic controller, “We’re gonna be in the Hudson.”

Mr. Slater’s test came not outside an airborne jet, but from within, taxiing on a blazing hot tarmac, when a surly passenger’s piece of luggage bumped his head. his explosive reaction belongs in a Johnny Paycheck song. he cursed over the intercom and bailed with a couple brewskies and ride on a fun-looking slide. In so doing, the authorities said, he broke the law.

Putting the two air men in each others’ shiny shoes leads to unpleasant scenarios.

The suitcase bops Captain Sullenberger on his head and he frowns and stares down the unruly passenger, calling her “young lady” and gravely launching into a lecture about the importance of tarmac safety and how items tend to jostle in the overhead compartments. he eventually bores her into drowsy submission.

And there is poor Mr. Slater in the cockpit when disaster strikes, his tweeting beginning when the tweeting outside ends: “OMG! 🙁 Double bird strike!!”

Instead of a cool “We’re gonna be in the Hudson,” air-traffic controllers might hear: “Don’t tell me what to do! all cozy in your cubicle while I’m up here, smelling burned birds! Why am I even in the cockpit? I’m a flight attendant! Who’s got a beer?” (Multiple expletives deleted.)

But in the jobs for which they trained, each man answered his call in his own way. Each looked in the mirror the next day and recognized the man looking back. But what of us? who do we see in the mirror? Sully or Slater?

The sad truth is that, while many of us want to see Sully, instead, staring back with that goofy grin, we get the other. because life isn’t made up of double-bird strikes. It’s an endless stream of annoying little suitcases hitting us on the head. This August heat, the job, the meathead playing the drums on the F train — face it, if you had an inflatable slide to get away from it all from time to time, you’d use it.

Slater vs. Sully: Sizing Up Two Air Men in a Crisis – City Room …

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