Sullenberger, Peanut Butter and Me

I’m an avid reader and an infrequent flyer. These two facts meshed together not long after I flipped up the footrest on my Lazy Boy chair and buried my head in HIGHEST DUTY, My Search for What Really Matters by Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III (Harper Collins Publishers, 2009). I read slowly and savored every moment of his childhood quest to fly. I marveled that he had been licensed as a private pilot at an age when I didn’t have a learner’s permit to drive a car.
 Still, we had a lot in common like respect for older people at an early age and obedience to rules. Each of us had taken pay cuts and lost pensions funds in mature years. And, perhaps related to those losses, we both had white hair by our mid-fifties.

I smiled as Captain Sullenberger described his routine preflight preparation for departure from San Francisco that culminated days later with Flight 1549 in the Hudson River. I visualized him in the kitchen of his Danville, California home, less than twenty-five miles from my chair, as he made two sandwiches, one turkey and one peanut butter and jelly, and placed them with a banana into a lunch bag. I anticipated a chuckle that would describe that lunch as his good luck charm. No so. His explanation was that United Airways, his employer, discontinued “the perk” of free meals for pilots and flight attendants for economic reasons. Farther down the page he speaks of his gratitude for adventures at thirty thousand feet, followed by this statement. “...I've got to be honest: Eating PB&J while smelling the gourmet beef being distributed with wine in first class—that’s a sure reminder that there are less-than-glamorous aspects of my job.”

On my most recent long flight, I didn’t open the tiny bag of salted treats that couldn’t be conquered with four ounces of free soft drink. An empty stomach served me well when queasiness began during turbulence near Dallas, Texas. If only I had known then that our pilot was also envious of the savory first-class food smell, perhaps starving if he didn’t pack a PB&J sandwich, I would have commended him on an excellent landing with his topsy-turvy stomach. Next time I fly, I’ll remember that the pilot and I have something special in common. An empty stomach.