Thanksgiving will never be the same for Chesley P. Sullenberger again. Last night on 60 Minutes, the hero pilot of Flight 1549 described his plane’s attack at the hands of terrorist birds. “I saw birds filling the windscreen,” he said. “Large birds. It felt like the airplane being pelted by heavy rain or hail. When I felt, heard, and smelled the evidence of them going into the engines … what I described at the time as a burned-bird smell … I knew that this flight was probably not going to end like the other ones of my career, with the plane undamaged on the runway.” Was he nervous? Nah. “I was sure I could do it.”
