Hanks and Eastwood a great team

Rating: 9/10 (10 September 2016)

While this may not be Hank's most demanding role, I think it will certainly be one of his most memorable, along with "Forrest Gump" and "Saving Private Ryan". And Eastwood met the challenge of telling the truth of the story in an engaging way without loosing the audience in tedium or BS. And I was glad to see that serious attention was paid to aeronautical reality in a movie--for a change. For those interested in how well the movie does stick to the facts, re: the go to source for that, http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/sully/ . For me, one of the two highlights of the film was what happened after the aircraft was ditched, in how the passengers didn't panic, and how well the rescue effort went. The other was the climax with Sullenberger's & Skiles testimony before the NTSB investigation (read "trial") which was in a much larger venue than I would have thought.
The one thing the movie (and the actual investigation, apparently) didn't cover was how things are changed when making a dead-stick (no thrust) landing in an airliner, which without thrust, have been likened to flying a brick. With a runway, you have only one shot aiming for a specific point--in this case surrounded by many tall buildings, and they didn't exactly have much time to see how far they could glide anyway. Better to have something flat, very wide and very very long, even if it is wet. The space shuttle is the only large aircraft that routinely does (or did) dead stick landings; and that's with much study, training, practice, and (at least at first) landing on a dry lake bed--offering plenty of wiggle-room.
What Sullenberger told 60 Minutes had to have been going through his head that day, "The only viable alternative, the only level, smooth place sufficiently large to land an airliner, was the river". The only semi-error they made was not to hit the ditch button which would have sealed the vents in the airplane (though the tail section was breached on landing) because it was at the end of the checklist which they didn't have time to complete. They made a big deal out of his starting the aux power unit (APU) out of checklist order. Just sayin'. That should have been the co-pilots's cue when Sully looks at him 10 seconds before ditching and asks, "Any ideas?". (A "DITCH" button, who'd've thunk.)