Our Monthly Client Letter, and notes from the desk

On January 15, 2009, at about 15:27 Eastern time, US Airways Flight 1549 — an Airbus A320 — lost thrust in both engines after striking a flock of Canada geese, and was ditched in the Hudson River roughly 8.5 miles from LaGuardia Airport. All 150 passengers and 5 crewmembers got out alive (NTSB Accident Report AAR-10/03).

I flew a different airplane for a different airline — 22 years in the left seat of Continental's 737s, 757s, and 767s — but every pilot I know remembers exactly where they were the day they heard about "Cactus 1549." It's the kind of morning you don't forget.

If you're anything like me, you've probably watched Sully — Clint Eastwood's film with Tom Hanks as Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger — more times than you'd care to admit. Every pilot I know has an opinion about it, usually a strong one about the parts Eastwood dramatized for the sake of good theater. It centers on the NTSB hearings that followed what's still described as "the most successful ditching in aviation history" (New York Post, Jan. 17, 2009), and the film's real argument is about the Human Element — one I've thought about often since I traded my wings for a fiduciary's desk.

The A320 Sully was flying that day carried some of the most advanced flight systems ever built — fly-by-wire, pioneered on that very airframe, with a level of computer-assisted control over takeoff, cruise, and landing that my own cockpits never had. And yet, two minutes and seven seconds after departure, when the geese took out both engines, the most important system on that airplane wasn't digital at all. It was the man in the left seat.

Sully had logged 19,663 total flight hours by then — 8,930 as pilot-in-command, 4,765 of them in the A320 specifically. That kind of experience doesn't come from a simulator. It comes from thousands of ordinary flights that quietly build the judgment you need for the one that isn't ordinary. I believe that kind of experience is, and always will be, irreplaceable — in a cockpit, and at a desk managing your life's savings.

I bring this up because there's a lot of noise right now about the role technology should play in investing and financial planning — models, algorithms, "set it and forget it" portfolios. We use serious computing power ourselves at Saint Francis Capital, every day, to research markets and stress-test planning scenarios. But we've made a deliberate choice not to hand the yoke over to the autopilot. We use these tools to sharpen our judgment, not replace it.

Because if a flock of geese — or a genuine Black Swan^[1] — ever shows up on your horizon, I want to already know every control, every checklist, and every procedure, so we can act on your behalf without hesitation. That's the whole point of having a real pilot in the seat, and it's the whole point of having a real advisor on your side.

I'd love to hear which parts of the NTSB hearings you think Eastwood got right — and which he didn't. And, as always, please let me know how I can help.

Thank you,