CON TEXT

LAND IT IN THE HUDSON:Is this some new aviation term?

No, but you’re on the right course setting. The term has been borrowed from the world of aviation, particularly that parallel universe in which passengers can actually survive a plane crash and walk away from the wreckage with only minor injuries.

Doesn’t happen very often, sadly.

A plane crash without at least a few fatalities is a rare thing, but it happened last month in New York when US Airways flight 1549 got into difficulties shortly after take-off. The plane hit a flock of birds, which knocked out the engines, but quick-thinking pilot Chesley Sullenberger landed the stricken plane in the Hudson river, saving the lives of all 155 people on board. “Sully” was given a hero’s homecoming, and the incident became known in the US – and quickly across the world – as the “miracle on the Hudson”.

We sure need a miracle these days.

With the economy in a nosedive, many people are hoping that a similar miracle will happen in the world’s financial markets, and that someone like Sully will come along and save the day.

Dream on.

However, in the absence of a superhero to guide them through the unfriendly skies of recession, those in the financial sector are having to fly blind, on a wing and a prayer, without a radar, through a thick fog of uncertainty. They have to find their way out of the no-buy zone and land safely without overshooting the credit runway.

So the high flyers are coming back down to earth with a bang.

Say your company is working on a particularly important project, but the whole thing looks like going belly up. The backers have gone bankrupt, the workers have gone on strike, and the project manager has had a nervous breakdown and run off to join the hare krishnas. What do you do?

Er, panic?

No, you take control of the project and try and salvage what’s left of it with minimal damage. You bring it down for a soft landing, saving face and avoiding a crash ‘n’ burn scenario. You land it in the Hudson.

So, you make the best of a bad situation.

That’s right. Since the real landing on the Hudson, businesspeople have adopted it as a metaphor for narrowly averting a tragic financial outcome. When it looks as if a deal is about to go down the pan, whoever manages to bring it to a conclusion without losing the company too many millions will be hailed a hero, a marketing miracle worker in the mould of the heroic Capt Sullenberger. This has given rise to an accompanying term, “Land it like Sully”.

So, no more kamikaze economics, then.

Instead of throwing themselves in the Hudson, traders on Wall St, inspired by Sully’s heroism, are hoping to regain control of the plummeting economy and steer it out of freefall – one deal at a time.

Now that would indeed be an economic miracle.

It would be, indeed.

Try at home:"You've lost Ailesbury Road used your get out of jail free card, and you owe me 50 grand rent for my hotel on Shrewsbury Road – you're gonna have to land this game in the Hudson."

Try at work:"When I asked for blue sky thinking, this wasn't what I had in mind."