Opinion | Thank you to all the heroes on that Southwest flight

As I read about Southwest Airlines Flight 1308, I stopped for a moment midway through the article because I began to choke up, with tears welling in my eyes [“‘She has nerves of steel,’” front page, April 19]. On a dark, rainy morning, at this dark hour of our nation, we needed a hero, someone with true grit, nerves of steel, a real backbone. And there she was right before me, Tammie Jo Shults, the former Navy pilot with hair blowin’ in the wind, looking steadily at me. For once, I didn’t need to turn to a history book to read about a hero, someone like John Basilone or Lewis Puller. I could look at one right there in the newspaper.

This pilot deserves a medal, a parade and, most of all, our thanks.

Jud Fisher, Haymarket

Regarding Beverly Weintraub’s April 22 Outlook essay, “Why call the Southwest captain a ‘female pilot’?”:

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I am a retired Air Force officer and pilot with more than 3,500 flight hours as a flight training instructor pilot, combat pilot and airlift aircraft commander (the Air Force equivalent of a commercial aircraft captain). I commanded an Air Force strategic airlift squadron that had male and female pilots, engineers and loadmasters (the equivalent of flight stewards, but with more responsibility). I know the value of a good crew member, male or female.  

Tammie Jo Shults did a great job of commanding her crew, getting the aircraft on the ground, and coordinating and assisting rescue personnel. Brava to her. I agree she is a pilot, not a “female” pilot. My quibble is that Weintraub wants to compare the actions of Shults to those of Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. Shults did nothing unique to flying. Granted, what happened to her flight was not your ordinary day at the office. But the problems were fully within her and her crew’s training profile. Sullenberger and his crew landed an aircraft on the water and evacuated all the passengers safely. That hadn’t been done before. From an aviation perspective, the actions are not comparable. Regardless, is he a hero? Is she a hero? Perhaps both are heroes.

While much as been written about Shults, not much has been written about her co-pilot and the passenger cabin crew. A good co-pilot is worth his or her weight in gold. The passenger cabin crew had to deal with the problems of rapid decompression, scared and injured passengers, a steep dive angle and a hole in the aircraft. While within the realm of their training, it was no mean feat. If we’re going to call Sullenberger and Shults heroes, let’s call the crew heroes too, all of them, male and female. Bravo to them.

James R. East, Springfield

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