For the first time since he announced his Alzheimer’s diagnosis over the summer, Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger has discussed his experience with the disease and what lies ahead.
“I’ve done harder things than this before,” Sullenberger, who successfully landed a commercial airliner filled with passengers on the Hudson River in 2009, told “Good Morning America” on Wednesday.
Sullenberger, 75, and his wife, Lorrie Sullenberger, spoke with host Robin Roberts about the diagnosis, which he revealed in a post on his website in July.
“I recently found out I have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. It is early stage,” the retired pilot wrote in the July 14 post. “For now, this means a name may not come easily to me, I forget a story I have recently told, or I don’t sleep as well, but I am in the beginning of this long journey.”
Sullenberger became a household name when he successfully landed a commercial airplane in the Hudson River, saving everyone on board, after a bird strike caused both engines to fail shortly after takeoff. The act has since been known as “The Miracle on the Hudson.”
Clint Eastwood dramatized Sullenberger’s heroic exploits in the 2016 film “Sully,” starring Tom Hanks in the title role.
Roberts on Wednesday asked Sullenberger to compare his diagnosis to that heroic moment.
“We had to devise a plan, execute that plan flawlessly for the first time — never having done it before — and save every life in 208 seconds,” Sullenberger recalled. He added, “Had even one person not survived, I would have considered it a tragic failure.”
“So I think we’re, we’re doing the same thing here,” he continued of his diagnosis. “We’re focusing clearly on the highest priority items first, and we are ignoring everything we don’t have time to do.”
Sullenberger is receiving monthly treatments, which aim to slow the condition. Both he and his wife said that initially, they wanted to keep his diagnosis private but later decided to speak out with the hope that they could help others.
“This is a disease, not a character flaw,” Lorrie Sullenberger said. “I think we need to talk about it more openly, and maybe other people can do the same.”
Sullenberger added that, at first, he questioned: “Why me?”
But “we’re not by any means alone,” he said. “We’re part of this community who are trying to make the best of a bad situation.”
Sullenberger said the first signs of the disease were forgetting things that he normally wouldn’t, like people’s names — even those he has known for a long time — and events.
The symptoms were easy to dismiss in the beginning, his wife said, because they were so minor. She noted that what a lot of people see in the news are cases of late-stage Alzheimer’s disease.
“If you have doubts, get tested because the sooner you act, the more options there are, the better the outcome is likely to be,” Sullenberger said.
One of the couple’s daughters, Kelly Sullenberger, told Roberts that since her dad’s diagnosis, her priority has been spending more time with their family.
“Our family likes to be prepared and have plans in place. It runs in our blood, and it’s something that you can’t really plan for,” she said.
Sullenberger, who is set to be inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame this month, told Roberts that his greatest concern is “that this is my last flight.”
“But if this has to be my last flight,” he said, “I’m going to go out using full afterburner.”
