Leadership on the wing

I have a blog on leadership all drafted and ready to revise and post next Monday, the day before the Inauguration. In the minds of many, leadership, or the potential return of same to The White House, will be the big story of the day.

The gods appear to be in agreement. They are so excited, they are giving us a preview. Forgotten what good things can happen when leadership is exercised? Let's give you an afternoon of television about a jetliner being crippled on takeoff. Less than two minutes into his climb, the pilot feels power failure in both engines. He's about 3,000 feet above New York City with 150-plus people on board. His first thought is probably reflexive. Power. Hit the throttles. No power. His second thought: where can I land. Speed, altitude, weight, maneuverability, airport locations, flashing into calculations. His third thought: the Hudson River.

He may remember these thoughts passing through his mind slowly and clearly, though in real time it may have been 15 seconds. Real time in critically short supply has the effect of triggering hyper-speed circuits in the brain, which played back later appear naturally to be slow. Many people have experienced this phenomenon. It feels like your life has passed before your eyes.

Why was his third thought the Hudson River? Because he's had it before, probably with every takeoff he has ever made out of La Guardia. The Hudson is no airport runway, but in a situation without choices, it is softer than the ground and doesn't have buildings poking out of it. I doubt there's ever a pilot who took off from La Guardia who didn't know and understand that.

But not many of them have ever been in the captain's seat 3,000 feet above New York City in an airliner with no power and 150 people on board. Here's where leadership comes into play. Conceptualizing the Hudson River as a landing strip, and actually taking action to land on it, are two different things. That captain had to act, based on the information at hand, and on his best estimates of providing his people their best chance to survive.

I have specific knowledge of one other airliner captain at that instant before taking action. His name was Charles L. Kageler, commanding a chartered DC-3 with 27 people on board on the afternoon of Nov. 28, 1958. He saw a military jet fighter coming toward him and acted. He cut all power and rolled his 25,000-pound aircraft hard left, standing it on its left wingtip, and dropped 1,000 feet straight down before recovering. I was in the back of that airplane, a passenger, and in that 1,000-foot drop, my life passed before my eyes. Kageler estimated the jet missed us by 25 feet. Without his action, I am not writing this today.

A strange thing about that experience: there was no panic on the airplane, because, I believe, there wasn't time for the brain to sort things out. That must account for the reported relative calm of the passengers yesterday when their pilot acted to save their lives. What about the pilot's brain? Insane as it seemed, he committed to a decision, a hard left turn into a powerless glide down to the river. That commitment was leadership, based on information at hand, best estimates, and willingness to act instantaneously, and it saved everyone on board. I am writing this only four hours after the accident, but if Obama's people haven't already sent an invitation to the U.S. Air pilot to be on the Inaugural dais next Tuesday, they are missing a terrific symbol for the day.