A Mute Swan performs a water landing

A seagull at its touchdown

A water landing is, in the broadest sense, any landing on a body of water. All waterfowl, those seabirds capable of flight, and some human-built vehicles are capable of landing in water as a matter of course.

The phrase "water landing" is also used as a euphemism for crash-landing into water in an aircraft not designed for the purpose. An intentional water landing during distress, but under controlled flight, is called ditching. Such water landings are somewhat common for small craft in general aviation and the military, but they are extremely rare for commercial passenger airlines.

By design

Apollo 15 capsule descends under two of three parachutes

A PBY Catalina flying boat landing

Seaplanes, flying boats, and amphibious aircraft are designed to take off and land on water. Landing can be supported by a hull-shaped fuselage and/or pontoons. The availability of a long effective runway was historically important on lifting size restrictions on aircraft, and their freedom from constructed strips remains useful for transportation to lakes and other remote areas. The ability to loiter on water is also important for marine rescue operations and fire fighting. One disadvantage of water landing is that it is dangerous in the presence of waves. Furthermore, the necessary equipment compromises the craft's aerodynamic efficiency and speed.

Early manned spacecraft launched by the United States were designed to land in water by the splashdown method. The craft would parachute into the water, which acted as a cushion to bring the craft to a stop; the impacts were violent but survivable. Landing over water rather than land made braking rockets unnecessary, but its disadvantages included difficult retrieval and the danger of drowning. The modern Space Shuttle lands on a runway instead.

In distress

Although extremely uncommon in commercial passenger travel, small aircraft ditchings are common occurrences. According to the United States Coast Guard, including helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, between military, air carrier, corporate, and general aviation, there is one ditching every day in U.S. waters alone.¹

General aviation

General aviation includes all fields of aviation outside of military or scheduled (commercial) flights. This classification includes small aircraft (eg, training aircraft, airships, gliders, helicopters, and corporate aircraft (including business jets and other for-hire operations). General aviation has the highest accident and incident rate in aviation, with 16 deaths per million flight hours, compared to 0.74 deaths per million flight hours for commercial flights (North America and Europe) [1].

Australian pilot Ray Clamback has twice survived ditchings of small aircraft (he also ended up in the water on an earlier occasion when the hull of the flying boat he was in was breached)². The first ditching was during a ferry flight from the United States to Australia on 20 November 1999. The Piper PA-28-181 Archer was forced to ditch between the US mainland and Hawaii after developing engine problems, and Clamback and his co-pilot were forced to tread water in mid-ocean for ten hours before being rescued by a cargo ship³. The second ditching took place on 4 October 2004; this time Ray was between Hawaii and Christmas Island in a Cessna 182 on another US-Australia ferry flight when it developed engine trouble. This time he was picked up by a cargo ship after six hours in the water³.

Commercial aircraft

Ethiopian 961 ditches in the Indian Ocean

Commercial airliners almost never make water landings. The FAA does not require commercial pilots to train to ditch, regulating instead the distance a plane can stray from an airfield.¹ Nevertheless, all commercial aircraft are equipped with flotation devices in case of water landings. According to FAA regulations, aircraft that travel no further than 50 nautical miles from shore are only required to be equipped with flotation seat cushions. Aircraft that travel no further than 162 nautical miles from shore are required to be equipped with life vests for all passengers. If an aircraft travels further than 162 nautical miles from shore it must be equipped with life vests for all passengers, and life rafts/raft evacuation slide. While there have been several 'successful' (survivable) water landings by narrow-body and propeller-driven airliners, there is still a good deal of popular controversy over the efficacy of such measures. For example, Ralph Nader's Aviation Consumer Action Project has been quoted as claiming (quite erroneously) that a wide body jet would “shatter like a raw egg dropped on pavement, killing most if not all passengers on impact, even in calm seas with well-trained pilots and good landing trajectories."¹ In December 2002, The Economist quoted an expert as claiming that "No large airliner has ever made an emergency landing on water" in an article that goes on to charge, "So the life jackets ... have little purpose other than to make passengers feel better."⁴⁵ This claim was repeated in The Economist in September 2006 in an article which claimed that "in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero."⁶ This is correct, but incomplete (the one wide-bodied landing was a case of a 767 leaving a runway).

Survival Rates of Passenger Plane Water Ditchings

In all cases where a passenger plane has undergone an intentional water landing or ditching, some or all of the occupants have survived. Examples of water landings in which passengers survived are:

• In 6 Aug 2005, Tuninter 1153 (an ATR 72) ditched off the Sicilian coast after running out of fuel. Of 39 aboard, 20 survived with injuries including serious burns. The plane's wreck was found in three pieces. survival rate was 59%.

• In 2002, Garuda Indonesia Flight 421 (a Boeing 737) successfully ditched into the Bengawan Solo River near Yogyakarta, Java Island after experiencing a twin engine flameout during heavy precipitation and hail. The pilots tried to restart the engines several times before taking the decision to ditch the aircraft. Of the 60 occupants, one, a flight attendant, was killed.⁷ Photographs taken shortly after evacuation show that the plane came to rest in knee-deep water.⁸

• In 1996, Ethiopian 961 (a 767-200ER) ditched in shallow water 500 meters from land after being hijacked and running out of fuel. Unable to operate flaps, it impacted at high speed, dragging its left wingtip before tumbling and breaking into three pieces. The panicking hijackers were fighting the pilots for the control of the plane at the time of the impact, which caused the plane to roll just before hitting the water, and the subsequent wingtip hitting the water and breakup are a result of this struggle in the cockpit. Of 175 on board, 52 survived. Some passengers were killed on impact or trapped in the cabin when they inflated their life vests before exiting. Most of the survivors were found hanging onto a section of the fuselage that remained floating. Survival rate was 26%.

• In May 2, 1970, ALM Flight 980 (a DC-9-33CF) ditched in mile-deep water after running out of fuel during multiple attempts to land at Princess Juliana International Airport in the island of Saint Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles under low-visibility weather. Of 63 occupants, 40 survivors were recovered by U.S. military helicopters.⁹ Survival rate was 63%

• In 1963, an Aeroflot Tupolev 124 ditched into the River Neva after running out of fuel. The aircraft floated and was towed to shore by a tugboat which it had nearly hit as it came down on the water. The tug rushed to the floating aircraft and pulled it with its passengers near to the shore where the passengers disembarked onto the tug; all 52 on board escaped without injuries.¹⁰ Survival rate was 100%

• In 1956, Pan Am Flight 943 (a Boeing 377) ditched into the Pacific after losing two of its four engines. The aircraft was able to circle around USCGC Pontchartrain until daybreak, when it ditched; all 31 on board survived.¹¹¹²Survival rate was 100%

• Also in 1956, Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 2 ditched into Puget Sound after the flight engineer forgot to close the cowl gills on the Boeing Stratocruiser's engines. All aboard escaped the aircraft after a textbook landing, but four passengers and one flight attendant succumbed either to drowning or to hypothermia before being rescued. Survival rate was 87%

• Jun 19, 1954 - Swissair Convair 240

• de Havilland Australia DHA-3 Drover - Apr 16, 1952

• Miami Air Lease Convair CV-340, December 4, 2004, Mall lake, Florida, 2 occupants, 2 survivors, 100% survival rate

• Antillian Airlines Flight 980, 02 May 1970, The flight was scheduled to fly from New York to St. Maarten. Because poor visibility, the aircraft could not land at St. Maarten and was diverted to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Five minutes later the crew was told the weather had improved at St. Maarten and were directed back. After 3 missed landing attempts at St. Maarten, the crew asked to be diverted to St. Thomas. By this time the plane was low on fuel. While flying to St. Thomas, the aircraft ran out of fuel and ditched into the ocean. Improper management of fuel by the crew. Inadequate warning given to passengers before the ditching with 23 of 63 passengers survived.

Aircraft also sometimes end up in water by running off the end of runways, or landing in water short of the end of a runway. While such incidents are not quite water landings, the passengers do find themselves swimming. Twice at LaGuardia Airport, aircraft have rolled into the East River; in 1989, USAir 5050, a Boeing 737-401 with 63 people aboard, sustained 2 deaths.¹³ In 1993 a China Airlines Boeing 747-409 ended up in water after it overran runway 13 at Kai Tak International Airport on landing during a typhoon with wind gusting to gale force. All of the 396 occupants donned life-vests, boarded the 8 slide/rafts and no fatalities resulted. The airframe remained above water even after the aircraft was evacuated.¹⁴In 1985, an American Airlines DC-10 taking off from Muñoz Marín to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in Texas overran the runway and nosedived into a nearby lake. Everybody avoided injury. Finally, on May 27, 1968, a Japan Air Lines DC-8-62 landed short of the runway in San Francisco Bay on approach to San Francisco International Airport. There were no fatalities, and the aircraft itself was in good enough condition to be removed from the water, rebuilt, and flown again.

Crashing

There is a distinction between a controlled ditching and simply crashing (not even crash-landing) into the water; the latter is capable of killing everyone upon impact and disintegrating the plane. For example, Armavia Flight 967, Alaska Airlines Flight 261, EgyptAir Flight 990, SilkAir Flight 185 (which disintegrated in midair) and Swissair Flight 111 left no survivors when they crashed, while just 8 of 73 on board American Airlines Flight 320 and 10 of 179 on board Kenya Airways Flight 431 survived their crashes. On a smaller scale, John F. Kennedy, Jr. and his two passengers died in a water crash. As pilot and columnist Patrick Smith comments, these crashes tend to be more memorable than controlled water landings, perhaps fueling the public's suspicions of the survivability of aircraft that hit water.¹⁵

In fiction

• The 1954 film The High and the Mighty revolves around the occupants of a passenger plane that must prepare to ditch in the Pacific. The plane actually makes it to land, so no ditching is shown.[2]
• The 1958 film Crash Landing revolves around the occupants of a passenger plane that must ditch in the Atlantic. The water landing "goes without a hitch and a US Naval ship is right there to save them."[3]
• In the 1977 film Airport '77, a private Boeing 747 crashes and settles to the ocean floor largely intact (less four engines and support pylons).[4]
• In the 1997 film Air Force One, the fictional President played by Harrison Ford and others are rescued mid-air from the plane before it crashes into the Caspian Sea and breaks up.
• The 2000 film Cast Away includes a detailed depiction of a FedEx DC-10 cargo flight ditching into the ocean, leaving the protagonist as the only survivor.
• The television series Lost centers around the survivors of a plane that broke up in midair over the Pacific, with the fuselage landing on an island but the tail section landing in the ocean. Later in the series, an exact replica of the crashed plane is positioned on the ocean floor to prevent the actual survivors from being found.
• The "in the event of a water landing" safety instruction was parodied in the 1998 film Star Trek: Insurrection when the body of the android Data was used as a flotation device.
• The video game Bioshock starts with a plane crashing into water in the mid-Atlantic

References

Further reading

• Aviation incidents by result from the Aviation Safety Network; see Off runway in water, CFIT into water, and Ditching.
• Horne, Thomas A. (July 1999). "In-Flight Emergencies: Ditching". AOPA Pilot 42 (7), http://www.aopa.org/pilot/features/inflight9907.html.  (Corrected version of September; see here for some complaints.)
• Schiff, Barry (March 1983). "Water Ways". AOPA Pilot 26 (3).  Reproduced on Equipped To Survive.
• Ditching Myths Torpedoed, by Paul Bertorelli, cites data that show an 88% survival rate for general aviation water ditchings.
• Motley, Elizabeth B. (October 2005), Survival Stressors Faced by Military Aviator/Aircrew Following Ditching Over Salt Water [.pdf]