NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Sully Sullenberger, the flight captain who helped save the lives of 155 people when he landed a disabled passenger plane on the icy Hudson River in 2009, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Sullenberger, 75 and now retired, told PEOPLE in a report Tuesday that he was diagnosed last August and is “in the beginning of this long journey.”
“It is early stage,” he said. “For now, this means a name may not come easily to me, I forget a story I have recently told, or I don’t sleep as well.”
Sullenberger rose to national fame after he and co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles made the emergency landing on Jan. 15, 2009, when a bird strike disabled both engines of US Airways Flight 1549 upon departure from LaGuardia Airport.
All 155 people aboard the Airbus—150 passengers and five crew—survived.
Sullenberger said he had noticed he was forgetting things and went to the doctor, who diagnosed him with the condition, which causes irreversible cognitive decline.
“This disease, he has told me, spares no age group and impacts millions of people around the world. It is the unwanted visitor at the door,” Sullenberger said.
Sullenberger’s wife, Lorrie, said her husband's signature “strength and steadiness is guiding us as a family.”
“Just as he was the same steady person before and after Flight 1549, he is the same steady person now, before and after this diagnosis,” she said.
