Chesley Sullenberger was born in Denison, Texas, His father was a descendant of Swiss-German immigrants named Sullenberger. He has one sister, Mary. The street on which he grew up in Denison was named after his mother's family. According to his sister, Sullenberger built model planes and aircraft carriers during his childhood, and says he became interested in flying after seeing military jets from an Air Force base near his house.

Sullenberger was employed by US Airways and its predecessor airlines from 1980 until 2010. (Pacific Southwest Airlines was acquired by US Air, later US Airways, in 1988.) He holds an Airline Transport Pilot Certificate for single and multi-engine airplanes, and a Commercial Pilot Certificate rating in gliders, as well as a flight instructor certificate for airplanes (single, multi-engine, and instrument), and gliders. In total, he has more than 40 years and 20,000 hours of flying experience. In 2007, he became the founder and CEO of Safety Reliability Methods, Inc. (SRM), a firm providing strategic and tactical guidance to enhance organizational safety, performance, and reliability.  He has also been involved in a number of accident investigations conducted by the USAF and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), such as Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 and USAir Flight 1493. He served as an instructor, Air Line Pilots Association Local Air Safety Chairman, accident investigator, and national technical committee member. His safety work for ALPA led to the development of a Federal Aviation Administration Advisory Circular. He was instrumental in developing and implementing the Crew Resource Management course that is used by US Airways, and he has taught the course to hundreds of airline crew members.  Working with NASA scientists, he coauthored a paper on error-inducing contexts in aviation. He was an air accident investigator for an NTSB inquiry into a major accident at Los Angeles International Airport, which "led to improved airline procedures and training for emergency evacuations of aircraft". Sullenberger has also been studying the psychology behind keeping an airline crew functioning during a crisis.  Sullenberger was active with his union, serving as chairman of a safety committee within the Air Line Pilots Association.  He was a featured speaker for two panels, one on aviation and one on patient safety in medicine, at the High Reliability Organizations (HRO) 2007 International Conference in Deauville, France, from May 29 to 31, 2007.

Did he ever work with NASA?
Working with NASA scientists,