The Big Lie of 'Flight': Miracles Land Planes - Jason Bailey - The Atlantic:
That's not surprising—from sports to health to safety, "miracle" is a word tossed around with reckless abandon. But it doesn't just mean good luck or a fortuitous alignment of circumstances. When we talk about miracles, we're talking about the hand of God, divine intervention; we're surrendering our understanding to forces beyond our control, knowledge, or even comprehension. So when we talked about the "Miracle on the Hudson," the subtext was that God himself had reached down to glide Flight 1548 onto the Hudson, ensuring that not a soul was lost in the dive.
By casting the remarkable events of that day into a framework of miracles and "somebody up there looking out for them," we cheapened and minimized the split-second thinking and considerable talents of Captain Sullenberger. "I think, in many ways, as it turned out, my entire life had been a preparation to handle that particular moment," he told Katie Couric on 60 Minutes a month later. Indeed, Sullenberger had 30 years on the job, had been an Air Force fighter pilot, and had trained flight crews in how to respond to emergencies in the air. The passengers and crew of Flight 1548 survived that flight because Sullenberger was their pilot, not because God was his co-pilot.