Even when you do everything right, there are still dice rattling.

It seems appropriate to me to note that one of the reasons we are all talking so much about the successful river landing of US Airways 1549 is that it is so unusual.

• The captain was an airline safety expert who knew what he was doing.
  
• The crew did everything right.
  
• The plane was intentionally landed in water.
  
• And they were lucky.
  
• Nobody died.
  

Please take a moment to consider http://yarchive.net/air/airliners/dc10_sioux_city.html which is an account by the captain of United flight 232, which took off from Denver heading to Chicago in July 1989.

The captain had spent more than 33 years flying commercial aircraft, and had been a Marine Corps flight instructor previously.

He had a DC-10 flight instructor onboard.

They had 44 minutes between the explosion and the crash.

Sioux City Airport had drilled for a wide-body aircraft emergency two years prior, and had revised their disaster planning to consider this sort of scenario.

Everyone did a good job -- the NTSB said
The Safety Board believes that under the circumstances the UAL flightcrew performance was highly commendable and greatly exceeded reasonable expectations.

111 of 296 people died.


If you aren't good, you can't get much good luck. But even doing it all perfectly isn't a guarantee.

Even when you do everything right, there are still dice rattling.

It seems appropriate to me to note that one of the reasons we are all talking so much about the successful river landing of US Airways 1549 is that it is so unusual.

• The captain was an airline safety expert who knew what he was doing.
  
• The crew did everything right.
  
• The plane was intentionally landed in water.
  
• And they were lucky.
  
• Nobody died.
  

Please take a moment to consider http://yarchive.net/air/airliners/dc10_sioux_city.html which is an account by the captain of United flight 232, which took off from Denver heading to Chicago in July 1989.

The captain had spent more than 33 years flying commercial aircraft, and had been a Marine Corps flight instructor previously.

He had a DC-10 flight instructor onboard.

They had 44 minutes between the explosion and the crash.

Sioux City Airport had drilled for a wide-body aircraft emergency two years prior, and had revised their disaster planning to consider this sort of scenario.

Everyone did a good job -- the NTSB said
The Safety Board believes that under the circumstances the UAL flightcrew performance was highly commendable and greatly exceeded reasonable expectations.

111 of 296 people died.


If you aren't good, you can't get much good luck. But even doing it all perfectly isn't a guarantee.