A Tale of Two Pilots

Last weekend, US Airways pilot Chesley Sullenberger, who piloted a crippled aircraft to a safe landing on the Hudson River, was given a hero’s welcome in his California hometown. Meanwhile, pilot Marcus Schrenker of Anderson, Indiana, sits in a jail cell. Both took to the air. Sullenberger soars in airline heroism fame. Schrenker is permanently grounded in shame.

On January 12, Schrenker flew his private six-seat Piper aircraft into ignominy and oblivion. His three business ventures—one an upscale investment agency—were under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Schrenker’s wife had just filed for divorce, and clouds of despair were sweeping into his life.

In a venture designed to deceive and elude those tracking him, he took off in his aircraft, sent out a distress signal, put the plane on auto-pilot, and bailed out—literally—over Alabama to let his plane drone on to what most now suspect was to be a cover-up crash-landing in the waters of the Gulf. But his cover was blown when the plane came down in a wooded area close to several houses in the East Milton area of the Florida panhandle.

Investigations revealed that he checked into a motel under an alias, walked away in disguise and drove off on motorcycle he had stashed away in a rental storage shed. Authorities tracked him to a tent in a campsite where he’d slashed his wrists. The prospects for, and recovery of, his tattered reputation are slim to none.

On January 15, Sullenberger eased his airliner with 150 passengers and five crew members into the air off the runway at New York’s LaGuardia Airport and made a 180-degree arching turn toward North Carolina. Loud thumps were heard as the plane hit a flock of geese, and the worst happened. The engines quit.

Sullenberger, calling on all his courage and training from 40 years of piloting swift fighter jets and sluggish gliders, chose to ditch in the Hudson River rather than try to make New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport a bit to the west. His textbook maneuvers and astonishingly precise watery crash-landing kept the plane intact and afloat, and all 155 passengers and crew climbed out to the safety of quickly appearing rescue boats. His character, courage and skill will be legendary and his admirers permanently grateful.

After Schrenker, we needed Sullenberger. Their polarity of motive and action are mirror images of both good and bad. One flew from his self-made troubles in an attempt to save himself even as he trafficked in shame for acquaintances and potential endangerment of innocents on the ground. The other looked death in the face and courageously used his skill and training to save 155 lives.
It is not only a tale of two pilots, but it reminds me of the history of two shepherds.

Jesus is the good shepherd as described in John 10:11: "I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep." But there is another leader—a false shepherd described in the same chapter. "But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them. The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep" (John 10:12-14).

In the end-times, multitudes will be led astray by the counterfeit Antichrist, a false shepherd promising good but plotting evil. "For indeed I will raise up a shepherd in the land who will not care for those who are cut off, nor seek the young, nor heal those that are broken, nor feed those that still stand. But he will eat the flesh of the fat and tear their hooves in pieces. Woe to the worthless shepherd, Who leaves the flock! A sword shall be against his arm and against his right eye; His arm shall completely wither, And his right eye shall be totally blinded" (Zechariah 11:16-17).

This looks forward to the time when even a mortal wound seems nothing to the miracle worker from Hell. "And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast" (Revelation 13:3).

It seems trite, but I know people would rather fly with Sullenberger than with Schrenker. Personally, I’d rather land safely with the former than have to bail out with the latter. I hope people as well seek protection in the Good Shepherd’s fold rather than the deception of the Devil, who promises good but plots evil.

For years, whenever I gave a benediction, especially at the funerals of those who had trusted Christ for salvation, I quoted Hebrews 13:20-21: "Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen."

David Virkler