Airline Pilot Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger, an American Hero on The Daily Show

Stewart studies Sully's coolness.

Finally the media is covering a good story, a story of a hero, a story of a regular person doing an excellent job in their field who’s quick and appropriate actions saved the lives of 155 people. Chesley Burnett “Sully” Sullenberger III is an American airline transport pilot, accident investigator and safety expert. He happens to be from the Bay Area, California, my home, which makes me smile.

If you don’t know what he did, he performed the emergency ditching of US Airways Flight 1549 heading to Charlotte, NC on January 15, 2009 in the Hudson River, offshore of New York City saving 155 people. The flight hit a flock of birds which broke the engines. They were initially going to land back at LGA or in New Jersey but Sully, thinking quickly, realized the best bet for safe landing was the Hudson River.

Sully's call to duty.

This is the kind of story that needs to be celebrated, and this is the kind of person we should see papered all over the media, but I’ll take seeing him and his new book, Highest Duty – My Search for What Really Matters. In this interview with Jon Stewart (one of my heroes) on The Daily Show, Sully reminds me of a nice dad, down to earth, smart and friendly. He appears an honest, intelligent man with a sense of humor who handles Stewart’s teasing with his own sense of humor. I hadn’t heard of his book before, but that interview made me want to read it.

A point that Stewart brought up in the interview that was quite important was the problem of low pay for airline workers. Frankly, I’d rather have my air crew paid extremely well whilst they’re whisking me across the sky and not overworking and under paying them so that they might make costly mistakes. Sully answers the question with diplomacy, a person who seems to see the big picture and aims to do as much good as he can in is minutes of fame.

Even Stewart, who has interviewed heads of state and accomplished people in various fields, seemed genuinely enamored and inspired by Sully’s plight. Stewart’s parting words for Sully:

“If I get anything out of this conversation it’s that these people [pilots] should be paid, compensated and we should put the damn tabs back in the book!”

How can you not admire a person like Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger? (Watch the clip below to learn about those “damn tabs”! Do you agree with Stewart?)