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RICHARD BRANSON - BRANSON OPENS WALLET TO HIRE CAPTAIN SULLY
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BRANSON OPENS WALLET TO HIRE CAPTAIN SULLY
Virgin tycoon SIR RICHARD BRANSON is desperate to hire the heroic pilot of last month's (15Jan09) miraculous Hudson River plane crash - insisting he'll make him the "best-paid pilot" on his airline.
The billionaire business mogul was left stunned by US Airways' Captain Chesley B. 'Sully' Sullenberger's quick thinking to land his plane on the river after the craft collided with a flock of geese upon departure from New York's LaGuardia airport.
All 155 passengers and crew were safely escorted from the sinking fuselage, and Branson is intent on bringing the Captain onboard his Virgin Atlantic Airways - at any cost.
He tells the New York Daily News, “I’d like him to come fly for us. We’ll make him the best-paid pilot at Virgin - we’ll give him double (the salary of) anybody else. He also can become one of the astronauts in my intergalactic spaceship company. The man can write his own ticket with me.
"Every single thing he could have done right, he did right - from the second he made that decision not to go to that local airport, to put the plane down in the water, to the way he looked after everybody.”
Considering the offer, Sullenberger adds, "That’s amazing. I hadn’t heard that. I will be happy to entertain all the things that are coming my way,”
AirlinePilotCentral.com estimates the 58-year-old Air Force veteran makes around $138,000 (£97,700) annually as a commercial pilot.
02 February 2009 16:16
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View all comments (3) - Comment on this story
screen name:
Another Pilot 
( 1)
posted on 02/02/2009 18:17
Mr DC10 Pilot,
You are truly just jealous. Show me the last time another pilot did a water
landing in a commercial aircraft that had 0 fatalities. Yep it has never
happened before.
As for bird strikes, they too are unavoidable in most cases. You have NO
frickin idea what they were or were not doing. Go back to flying your DC10 on
your Microsoft Flight simulator.
screen name:
FlyBoyDC10 ( 2)
posted on 02/02/2009 17:46
Branson, have you lost your mind??? Let's see, taking off from LGA (built on a
landfill), during migratory bird season, with bird advisories in effect. What
happened was, they took off, raised the gear, engages the autopilot, and
started typing with their heads down, INSTEAD of looking for airborne
obstacles, like Canadian geese. He probably never saw them.
Would not have happened in a DC-10. I suggest we build planes that require you
to fly rather than operate. Having your head out of the c**kpit could have
prevented this from happening.
Sully exercised his only option, and executed the maneuver well. That's what
we get paid the "big bucks" for. Rather than offer Sully a job, pay your own
pilots more. Anyone of them would have done the same thing.
