You expect to come across pilots called Chesley B. Sullemberger 111 in disaster movies but this one had a happy ending.
The extraordinary ‘Miracle on the Hudson’, in which Sullemberger, 57, managed to land a plane on New York’s River Hudson with the kind of sang froid you would have expected from the pilot of one of those stately flying boat planes that used to land on the water between the wars, will be chewed over by all and sundry between now and the inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday.
Does it mean that America’s luck has turned (the plane could easily have crashed into a Manhattan high-rise bringing awful memories of 9/11, nobody was killed) and even that Obama is going to be a lucky president?
If you believe in auguries maybe it does.
Obama almost certainly doesn’t, being one of life’s realists despite the visionary rhetoric, but to start his presidency with a major disaster on his hands (albeit one caused by Canada geese rather than terrorists) would have been a cruel blow for everyone.
So still more reasons to be grateful to the veteran pilot and his crew.