I'll start off by saying the absolute first thing every pilot learns, from day one of his private license training, is to always keep an eye out for a decent emergency landing site. Always. Even on the first day I was flying around Long Beach, my instructor simply pulled the throttle to idle and said, "your engine just failed..." Always have a plan for an emergency landing, whether you're in a Cessna or a 747.
Every New Hire pilot at any major airline brings with him (just so I don't have to keep typing "/her") at least a thousand or two hours of flying time, and a Commercial or Airline Transport Pilot License. Regional airlines require fewer hours of time, but all the same licenses and medical standards.
Once they show up for the first day at their new airline, they go through anywhere from two to five (I did five) weeks of ground school. This includes five days of company indoctrination (company policies, Federal Aviation Regulations, safety & security, etc.). The other one to four weeks is learning about the systems of the particular aircraft you will be flying. One day air conditioning, two days engines, two days electrical system, and so on and so forth. By the end, your pilot knows EVERYTHING about that plane from how the thrust reversers are triggered to the height and wingspan of the plane. Yes, I even know how the poop is flushed. Every button, every sensor, every light. After this intense school-style training and a written exam, an FAA representative gives each pilot a thorough (45 minutes to 2 hours, typically) oral exam on the plane's components and systems.
If they pass that, it's on to the simulator. This is typically about two weeks (ten days, 4 hours at a time) of training. Most major and regional airlines have full motion simulators (fun!) and if not they outsource the sim training to a facility that has them. The main focus here is operation and crew standardization (so everyone knows their job and can be paired with any other pilot without problem) in the cockpit. At least half of the time, though, is spent focusing on emergency situations. The sim instructor needs only press a button to make the simulator lose an engine (or both), blow open the cabin door, or fail the flaps. I'd say I spent a good six days of my training flying around with one engine inoperative, and no, I did not crash once. You go over failures of dozens of systems in cruise flight, while landing, and on takeoff. Especially on takeoff-- engine failures just after V1, or the point at which you would not be able to stop safely on the runway while in your takeoff roll. Tons of that. Yes, with one engine out, you can still safely takeoff, climb, circle, and land. In one instance, I was flying along at 30,000 feet, when we simulated a rapid decompression, hydraulic failure, and failure of all five electrical generators in flight. That means oxygen masks on, blank instrument screens, no flaps, and I had to pull a mechanical lever to get the landing gear down. But we landed safely at Albuquerque airport. Oh, and no regular brakes, so we had to hand pump the parking brake to stop. But it's possible. Nice to know, isn't it? Obviously, two engines out is a little tougher.
After the sim training, you get a two hour "checkride." An FAA rep gives you a practical exam in the sim to test your knowledge and demonstration of flight operations, including (in fact, focusing on) emergency and single-engine operations and approaches to land. If you mess up and "bust your ride," you'll have to retrain and redo the checkride on a different date.
Once you pass the checkride, a new pilot (including experienced pilots simply switching to different aircraft) will typically start their online flying (flying in scheduled operations with passengers or cargo) with a designated Initial Operating Experience Captain. IOE is what they call it at American and Southwest, but I don't know if the nomenclature is the same across the industry. For a certain amount of flight hours (around 15-75) the rookie must fly with this "teaching Captain" to finish the formal training. After that is done, he is good to go.
But wait! There's more! If you order now, you get the steak knives absolutely free!
For First Officers (the young studs in the right seat), we are required to come back for (thankfully, abbreviated) ground school and the associated FAA oral and sim exams every 12 months. For Captains (the old farts in the left seat) it's every 6 months. We re-do all the systems info and demonstrate once again that we can indeed still manage an emergency situation in the air. Yes, every six or twelve months every pilot at every airline has to go back and play "you bet your job" with an FAA checkride. You bust, and you can't fly. And to top it off, it'll be harder to get a job at a different place with busted checkrides on your record. Yup, each bust goes on your FAA record, not just your company record.
So. By no means would I ever diminish the skills and cunning and awesomeness of Captain "Sully" and his First Officer of US Airways, but rest assured, they were more prepared for these circumstances than you would believe. Every flight we pilots fly is treated as having a possibility of any emergency. I think the majority of pilots nationwide would have made the same decision as Sully did to ditch in the Hudson. But his experience and wisdom truly came into play with how fast he made the decision. At first they wanted to head to the airport over in Jersey and land there, but later chose to ditch. A pilot with much less experience would probably have made the same decisions, but perhaps even only 10 or 15 seconds later. That 10 or 15 seconds could have been disastrous. Could have been the same outcome, but who knows.
Let's not ever find out...
