ABSTRACT
On the afternoon of January 15, 2009 only minutes into its flight to North Carolina from New York, US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of geese and lost power in both engines. The A320 Airbus aircraft had just achieved its maximum altitude of approximately 3,000 feet. With great speed of thought, Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger III and his co-pilot determined that the only suitable option for an emergency landing was the nearby Hudson River. Thanks to the decisive action of the pilot and his crew, all 155 souls on board were rescued unharmed following a perfectly executed splash-landing (Eisen and Savel, 2009). Captain Sullenberger has since begun to advocate for patient safety and health care reform in the United States (Denham, Sullenberger III, Quaid, and Nance, 2012), and has been particularly vocal about the importance of a strong safety culture. Though this interest in patient safety advocacy is not entirely extraordinary, given the many corresponding safety issues between aviation and health care, it would not be a surprise if Captain Sullenberger’s views were also informed by the book he left behind on Flight 1549-a library copy of Just Culture: Balancing Safety and Accountability (2007) by Dr Sidney Dekker.
