Apparently people do listen to the boring presentation given rapidly before each flight. This is the second miracle of people following safety regulations in the US in the last 30 days, the other being in Denver on 12-20. 

Perhaps the governor of NY thought it was a miracle anyone could follow directions?

In all the coverage I saw I didn't see a single person praise any god or gods for the events, all was directed at the pilot crew and rescuers (the ones who deserve it).  Additionally, when the word miracle was used, that word alone was in inverted commas which generally signifies sarcasm or even irony in the usage of the word.  I was quite surprised and pleased by the coverage I saw.

I'm still having trouble believing the pilot managed to land it properly though, despite the pictures of the aftermath being the very first thing I saw of the events.  He deserves a heck of a lot of praise and then some.

Look at you, another hero performing miracles!

All kidding aside, I'm curious if you folks are ok using the word "hero" to describe the pilot.  I am, Kelly isn't a fan.  The act of going up and down the aisle of a plane filling with water twice to ensure everyone was out and the shirt he gave off his back to one of the passengers sit as particularly heroic acts in my mind. 

So... is he a hero?

 I'm guessing the pilot wanted to live just as much as everybody else, so I'm not really going with the hero thing.  Heroes are people who intentionally risk their own lives to save others.  This guy saved many lives in the process of saving his own.

I vote "Not a Hero."

Hero: My definition of hero is someone who braves a danger (mortal or not) in order to benifit others without clear benifit for him or her self when avoiding the danger is also a viable option. I think that makes the pilot a hero.

Miracle: Little annoys me more than calling these situations a miracle. It dismisses everyone involved in making safety devices, imrpoving airframe safety, and making safety plans and procedures as unimportant. The reason those passengers and flight crew are alive is because humanity spends a great deal of time trying to improve the survivability of the inevitable failure of our technology or our use of it.

Oh... well... then he's a hero

I am going to look it up but my bet is that the airline would expect him to ensure all passengers are off the plane. I am sticking with he was doing his job.

A hero to me would be if "jane doe" in seat 35C, not heeding the warning/direction of the flight attendents, busted back into the cabin to help out any passengers that were left behind.

I am shocked that you would use the words "I know it may not technically fit the definition.."  

Does the army really 'inspire' people to be heroic? Weeks and weeks of rigorous training, routine and discipline - all the time sending the message of protecting the troops' home nation doesn't sound inspiring to me. It sounds like a sort of brainwashing. The US offers college $$$ for signing up to be a 'hero'.

So being a hero is a perception not a state of being? What I mean is this: Being a hero is dependant on what those around you observe and their emotional reaction to your action.

So a person that happens to come across a burning building and enters it at the prompt of screaming is a hero too? Even though there was no brainwashing, no obligation to a boss or company to do so?

May I say Hamby that your past few posts regarding words we use, their meaning and misuse have me really thinking everytime I stumble across words like this. I guess a thank you is in order! 

Now I must spend a few hours looking up definitions/usage of the word hero...just to be sure 

I think this is mostly true.  A hero is only a hero if other people perceive him to be so.  Listen, I think of myself as a hero because I tell people their religion is shit.  Most of the world will not agree with me, and I would be laughed off stage pretty much anywhere in the world if I tried to get a medal... any medal at all.

This kind of goes back to the fact that self image is really what we think others see when they look at us.  Remember reading about all those experiments that prove we trust other people more than ourselves?  I'm thinking of one in particular where the subject is unknowingly in a room with lots of accomplices.  When asked to answer a simple question, all the accomplices answer wrong -- with complete conviction.  The poor subject changes his answer to the wrong answer a significant number of times, and what's worse, in debriefing, he very often believes that his own perception was wrong!

The last little piece of the puzzle is that heroism is for the public.  Going back to me, I think I'm a hero for atheism, but what does that do for anybody?  For me, I suppose it gives me motivation to keep doing what I do, but the whole thing about being a hero is they put you on the front page of the paper and the local diner gives you free meals and all the kids want your autograph.  Why else would we call people heroes posthumously?  Heroism is a label for the public, not for the benefit of the hero.

I probably should have said, "The common definition doesn't exactly line up with the psychology of heroism."

Oh, sure.  I'm not saying you have to be brainwashed to be a hero.  I'm saying that for the most part, humans are programmed to not be particularly heroic.  You know the whole group syndrome where the more people are around, the less likely any one of them is to act?  That's how a hundred people can watch someone get mugged and not help.  Anyway, brainwashing (as in Army bootcamp) can train us to react by trying to help, and this facilitates heroic behavior in some circumstances.  I didn't mean to say that it was necessary.

No, thank you!  I'm much more prolific when I believe I am doing good in the world, so you're doing me a favor by helping to keep me motivated.

Oh i readid da entire forum! just not the news article, which changed my posted response

Well... I was originally pissed at the term 'miracle' too, because of the obvious context the word is used in. After having watched the photos of the crash-landing, however, and reviewing the type of aircraft used - I have to say, the event does fit one of the definitions given to the word 'miracle':

3. a wonder; marvel.

That dude is fucking Clark Kent, as far as I'm concerned. He was flying a Goddamn AC-320! Gene already pointed it out, but I must emphasize this:

I want to try and put this in perspective:

Imagine that the company who manufactured your car has arbitrarily decided that there isn't a single human being who can drive (...some days I might agree, but anywho...), so your car came with a built-in computer that takes over driving the vehicle, even though it is a dumb, blind automaton just following a pre-programmed script with no regard for the current situation, any time you need to make a defensive driving maneuver.

Basically, the moment that the plane lost it's engines, you can imagine the pilot furiously swearing at, beating and wrestling with the controls as the computer merrily attempts to barrel roll the aircraft into the pavement. He had to not only maintain control over a several dozen ton, thrustless aluminum brick and maintain a gentle enough approach to get her belly-down in the river without pulling her apart, but had to fight a crazed autopilot feature that was likely attempting to get him killed at every turn!

If you don't understand the sort of accomplishment that is, training or no training, you have no appreciation for the difficulties involved in landing aircraft. Suffice it to say, it is not easy, even in ideal conditions approaching a standard runway.

If one engine failed, what the dude did was just amazing.

If both of them failed? Holy shit, that dude shown be given a few million dollars and toured around the world to show everyone else how the fuck to fly a plane.

I feel oddly as if I'd confessed to joining Youth for Hitler or something.  All I said was that basic training and army life can override the training that keeps people from doing anything at all.  Sometimes, this produces acts of heroism.

 Well, I grew up with a Force Recon dad, as it turns out.  I've seen a lot of the day to day military life, and I know all about the military mind-set.  I'm certainly not prepared to get into a meta-discussion of the merits of military training, so I'm not going to belabor the point.  I have just spent a lot of time around military guys who might have been the biggest jerks around, but they were serious about protecting American citizens.  Call it what you will, but that kind of mindset makes the news from time to time.

(Maybe you think I'm saying I personally find their acts heroic... that's not it.  I'm saying the military manufactures heroes for the masses.)

Oh my. Ed Current just kills me. Hilarious stuff.

If I may, I do not get hung-up and individual acts of heroism in WWII for two reasons:

1) Only Allied acts are well-publicized. Hell, until recently, it's been only Western Allied heroism that publishers have toted around. The Russians, Germans, Japanese, etc each had good people enlisted in their armies - and when we decide we want to focus on how 'heroic' the Allies were, we effectively reinforce the idea that history is retouched to serve the purposes of the victors alone.

2) The Allies, as a body, were no less monstrous than the Axis. It's disgraceful that not even today will you find an average layman who knows, say, the following quote from Arthur Harris (head of the RAF bomber command):

"...I do not regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British grenadier."

...with regards to the firebombing of Dresden (Curious what was held as standard procedure for the destruction of 'infrastructure' at the time by the Allies: dropping an initial payload of superficially damaging incindiary explosives, as well as accelerants. Provide time for the local emergency service crews to attempt to extinguish fires and rescue the trapped/injured - and then, while they're at work, drop the real 'business' incidiaries, igniting the accelerants and wiping-out as many emergency service crews as possible in order to maximize destruction and casualty tolls), despite the fact that everyone seems to know that Hitler and his administration were beasts.

People will cheerily point fingers at Nazi propaganda posters and death squads, yet nothing but an uncomfortable silence ever appears to frame things like this:

...Or this...

...Or this...

...Or this...

...Or, say that rather disquieting tale of the aftermath of the Battle of Okinawa, where the American forces turned a town into, effectively, their own private molestation camp. Or the countless stories of Allied forces preferring to simply shoot Japanese wounded and surrendering troops on sight, as they were simply 'subhuman' and 'too much trouble to deal with', thus reinforcing the kamikaze attitude (as many Japanese believed - and rightly so - that they would not be taken alive even should they surrender).

The actions of Doss are commendable. The actions of the Allied war effort are not.

Oh. They show-up for me.

They're the American propaganda posters from WWII. See them here

If the posters, stories and quotes are anything to consider, the Americans had an equal hatred for their opponents (referring to asians as 'Japs', regardless of nationality), Admiral Bull Hallsey in fact once quoted as saying, "...the Japanese language will only be spoken in Hell by the time this war's over,"

Moreover, how is it 'uncomparable' when American troops landed in Okinawa and regularly raped, in a systematic fashion, any of the women there (occassionally to death)? Or machine-gunned crews of sinking ships attempting to flee in lifeboats (which likely also would've resulted in painful dismemberment)? Or just lined-up and shot injured soldiers whom were owed madical aid?

Alright - I will concede that the Allies were, unlike the Axis, not scaling their atrocities on the industrial level. However, both Hallsey and Harris were certainly in high command positions, so I contest the idea that the Allied actions were not sanctioned by their command HQs (FDR himself, for example, may have frowned upon the atrocious behavior of his troops - but you'll note that very few (any?) Allied commanders were reprimanded for their behavior. Hallsey and Harris weren't).

wow, that is really easy to win. Its much more fun to just dive straight into the water.