How Much of Tom Hanks’ ‘Sully’ Is True? (2024)

On January 15th, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 left LaGuardia Airport with 155 souls onboard and only minutes later made the most famous descent in aviation history, right into the Hudson River. Piloted by Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and his co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles, the plane landed in the freezing water with no fatalities, and Sully gained recognition as a national hero. Sullenberger later wrote a memoir about his life, specifically the water landing, entitled Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters, which served as the inspiration for the 2016 film, Sully. Clint Eastwood was attached to direct, Tom Hanks was cast in the titular role, and the much-anticipated biopic was ready for takeoff.

Given that the flight itself took only minutes, Sully focuses largely on the aftermath of the Hudson landing, namely Sully’s PTSD and the subsequent investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). While the film was received positively by critics and audiences, the NTSB was less than impressed with their portrayal as nitpicky antagonists rather than safety professionals who were just doing their job to ensure that planes don’t needlessly end up floating down the Hudson. So, how much of Sully was true to the real story of Flight 1549?

Sully

PG-13

Biography

Drama

Where to Watch

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See Also

Sully Movie vs True Story of Miracle on the Hudson, Flight 1549Why the ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ in the new movie Sully was no crash landingSully | Rotten TomatoesSullied: with Sully, Clint Eastwood is weaponizing a hero

When pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger lands his damaged plane on the Hudson River in order to save the flight's passengers and crew, some consider him a hero while others think he was reckless.

Release Date

September 9, 2016

Director

Clint Eastwood

Cast

Tom Hanks , Aaron Eckhart , Laura Linney , Valerie Mahaffey , Delphi Harrington , Mike O'Malley , Jamey Sheridan , Anna Gunn

Runtime

96 Minutes

Writers

Todd Komarnicki , Chesley Sullenberger , Jeffrey Zaslow

How Much of Clint Eastwood's ‘Sully’ Is True?

Concerning the actual plane landing in the river, Sully is pretty accurate. In real life, the plane took off from LaGuardia Airport and was soon bombarded by Canada geese, which caused both engines to fail while the aircraft was still climbing. Although he was urged by air traffic controllers to try and get to a runway and land the plane at either Teterboro or LaGuardia, Sully knew that they didn’t have enough height or time to reach either one, and made the executive decision to land the plane in the Hudson River. He would later say that the Hudson was the only place in the heavily populated area “long enough, wide enough, and smooth enough” to land with minimal risk. He told the passengers to brace for impact and made a successful water landing. The passengers quickly evacuated into the freezing temperatures, but all miraculously survived with no fatalities. The entire incident took less than four minutes from the bird strike to the water landing.

Sully takes obvious care to be true to the events of the accident, from the blinding flash of geese that fills the windscreen, to the cut on flight attendant Doreen’s (Molly Hagan) leg, to Sully checking every row of the flight to ensure that no passengers were left on board. Similarly, Sully’s only announcement over the PA system, “Brace for impact,” was, in real life, all that he relayed to the passengers and cabin crew before the water landing. Sully disclosed during the following trial that he regretted that he didn’t have time to better communicate the situation to the flight attendants, and chose the words “brace for impact” because if passengers were meddling with life jackets rather than bracing themselves at the time of landing, there was a greater risk of injury. The conversation between Sully and Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) after the engines failed was also recreated almost verbatim.

'Sully' Explores the Pilot's Trauma

Beyond the crash itself, one of the major themes that Sully handles particularly well is Sully’s experience with trauma after the accident. No stranger to pulse-pounding biopics and powerful dramas, Tom Hanks does an artful job of portraying the pilot's harrowing experience, from the actual landing to the sleepless nights that followed. The movie opens in the co*ckpit, with Sully piloting a crashing flight that winds up exploding in the side of a building. This is quickly revealed to be a nightmare that Sully has after the real accident, but we immediately know that he’s struggling greatly with the endless “what-ifs.”

Sullenberger has revealed that he, unsurprisingly, had trouble sleeping and focusing after the events of Flight 1549, and lost thirteen pounds due to stress. He went to therapy to help with his trauma, and now advocates getting professional help after traumatic experiences. The movie is also sure to paint Sully in a heroic and positive light (casting America’s Dad, Tom Hanks, was immediately a step in the right direction), but the unfortunate flip side of this is that if a movie has a hero, it needs a villain, too.

‘Sully’s Portrayal of the NTSB Investigation Isn’t Totally Accurate

Like most biographical dramas, Sully took some creative liberties. Most significantly, the movie took the routine investigation done by the NTSB and twisted it into somewhat of a witch hunt. In real life, the NTSB, fairly enough, needed to determine if the risky water ditching was actually necessary, or if Flight 1549 could have made it to a nearby runway. They ran multiple simulations to see if the plane could have landed safely at other airports, and the results were split. Furthermore, the pilots who did the simulations were fully briefed on the flight trajectory, and therefore aware of the impending bird strike and where to go after. To make it more realistic to the situation, they added 35 seconds of delay to account for the decision-making time that Sully would have actually needed during the real accident. After this, they were able to confidently say that the water landing was the safest thing that Sully could have done, and 34 new recommendations were made by the board, including that jet engines should be tested for their ability to withstand bird strikes.

Now, the movie tells a slightly different story of the NTSB’s investigation. In Sully, the NTSB is immediately on the offensive. They ask Sully and Skiles reasonable questions like whether the pilots had recently consumed any alcohol before the flight, if they were having trouble at home, or if they’d gotten enough sleep, but the movie somehow frames these as unfair, probing questions. Real investigators were replaced with fictionalized ones like Charles Porter (Mike O’Malley), who smugly watches over the trial and seems excited to find fault in Sully’s flight skills. According to Sullenberger, who served as an adviser on the movie, the original script used the real investigators’ names, and he requested that they be taken out.

Tom Hanks’s ‘Sully’ Sacrifices Accuracy for Added Drama

Furthermore, while in real life the NTSB implemented the 35-second delay in order to account for decision-making time, in the movie, they don’t even consider this until Sully takes a stand at the trial and gives a Tom Hanks-style monologue about the so-called “human factor.” This fabricated turn of events makes the NTSB look incompetent, and while Sully is undeniably a hero, the real NTSB came to this conclusion without his intervention. While at the end of the movie, the NTSB is gracious towards Sully and commends his extraordinary skill, they were overall painted in an unflattering and defaming light. Still, Sully has since said that Sully accurately portrayed the tension he felt while being investigated by the NTSB (he was literally on trial, after all), so we can’t discount every aspect of the investigation portrayed in the movie.

All things considered, Sully is a movie that honors the strength of its protagonist and the resilience of the survivors, but at the same time insults the NTSB on Clint Eastwood’s quest for added drama. To be fair, biopics are often exaggerated, and nobody is buying tickets to “Everybody Survived the Plane Crash and The Follow-Up Investigation Was Totally Above-Board.” The filmmakers needed conflict, struggled to find any, and made some up. However, despite the inaccuracies, Sully still gives us insight into the remarkable survival tale of Flight 1549, and Tom Hanks gives one of his best dramatic performances, playing the duty-driven, kind-hearted Captain Sully with all the gravitas and mustachioed dignity he deserves.