Captain Sully and justifiable defense

[2] On January 15, 2009, a US Airways A320 was struck by birds one minute after takeoff, causing both engines to fail and restart attempts to fail. Captain Sully rejected the air traffic control's suggestion to land at a ground airport, citing it as unfeasible, and successfully executed an unpowered landing on the Hudson River in New York, keeping the plane intact. All 150 passengers and 5 crew members survived. This event is known as the Miracle on the Hudson, and Captain Sully became an American hero.
 

[3] However, according to regulations, Captain Sully and his co-pilot were still subject to questioning by the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) to determine whether the crew made errors in handling the crisis, specifically whether it was necessary to risk a water landing. During the hearing, the NTSB, in collaboration with Airbus, used computer simulations and two groups of pilots operating flight simulators to demonstrate to the attendees that the plane could have landed at a ground airport. Faced with this challenge, Captain Sully had the following dialogue with the NTSB.

[4] Captain Sully: These simulations don't reflect real people, not real people encountering an emergency for the first time. After the bird strike, they immediately returned to the airport. They clearly knew the turns and headings in advance; they didn't take time to check, and they didn't activate the auxiliary power unit.

NTSB: They faced exactly the same conditions as you did.

Captain Sully: No, they didn't, because no one warned us. No one said, "You're about to experience the lowest-altitude dual engine failure in history, but don't worry, just turn left toward an airport." During the simulated landing, there was an exaggerated bank turn. How many attempts did it take to get that turn right? These pilots are excellent, but in the simulation, you removed all the humanity from the cockpit.

First Officer: This isn't a video game. This is life and death.

Captain Sully: Please find out how many simulated test flights were conducted.

NTSB: 17. It took 17 simulated test flights to successfully execute the emergency landing.

In subsequent simulations, with 35 seconds removed, all ground landings failed.
 

The above dialogue provides valuable reference for determining the actions of the man in white in the Kunshan "counter-killing" case. Self-defense is established based on human nature, but its constitutive elements, or the red line of excessive defense, are designed by reason. The NTSB can use computer simulations and manual simulations after the event to study whether Captain Sully's handling was reasonable, but public security, procuratorial, and judicial authorities cannot simulate whether the man in white had a better way in the "counter-killing" case—specifically, a way to ensure his personal safety without involving excessive defense. Public security, procuratorial, and judicial authorities, or legal scholars, will not adopt a God's-eye perspective and tell the man in white, "Don't worry, the few strikes you just made have already rendered him incapable of harming you. His second run to the car was to escape, not to retrieve another knife or gun. Your legal rights are no longer under urgent and real threat."

Moreover, in the "counter-killing" case, the situation the man in white faced was far worse than what Captain Sully encountered. Flying a plane is Captain Sully's profession, and he received special training (though emergency landing without power after dual-engine failure at low altitude is not in the training manual). The man in white had no training on how to handle being attacked with a knife, nor could he be expected to flip through a few pages of a legal textbook on the spot to understand the conditions for self-defense, how to determine these conditions, and the consequences of violating them. In that situation, evaluating the man in white's actions must strip away all rationality and retain only the most basic human nature, even animal instinct. The only thing the man in white could rely on, and what we could demand of him, was the basic survival instinct of a living being. One detail at the scene sufficiently illustrates this: after the man in white killed the BMW man, he kept a firm grip on the steel knife and only let go when the police arrived.

Finally, I conclude this article with a quote from Captain Sully: "You are looking for human error, then make it human."