Chesley B. Sully Sullenberger III
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January 16th, 2009
When he still was a boy, Chesley Burnett Sullenberger loved to watch fighter jets roar over his small hometown in Texas and always wanted to fly.
Sullenberger took private lessons and earned his private pilot’s license when he was a junior in high school.
He passed the academy’s rigorous entry requirements in 1969 and headed to Colorado Springs.
Commissioned four years later as an Air Force officer, Sullenberger, who now goes by the nickname “Sully,” soon developed an interest in accident prevention. A fighter pilot flying F-4 Phantom II jets, he served as a member of the U.S. Air Force mishap investigation board.
In 1980, he joined US Airways and began a long civilian career as a pilot, investigator, researcher and entrepreneur, founding Safety Reliability Methods, a company that helps businesses improve their safety.
Sullenberger now lives in Danville, Calif., where he is a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, which studies safety, infrastructure, and preparedness in accidents and natural disasters.
Safety Reliability Methods, Inc. writes about him:
SRM Founder Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, III is a captain for a major U.S. airline with over 40 years of flying experience. A former U.S. Air Force (USAF) fighter pilot, he has served as an instructor and Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) safety chairman, accident investigator and national technical committee member. He has participated in several USAF and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident investigations. His ALPA safety work led to the development of a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Advisory Circular. Working with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientists, he coauthored a paper on error inducing contexts in aviation. He was instrumental in the development and implementation of the Crew Resource Management (CRM) course used at his airline and has taught the course to hundreds of his colleagues. Sully is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy (B.S.), Purdue University (M.S.) and the University of Northern Colorado (M.A.). He was a speaker on two panels at the High Reliability Organizations (HRO) 2007 International Conference in Deauville, France May 29-31, 2007. He has just been named a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.
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