[Sakos]

I don't know why I thought a controlled landing of a plane on water was generally possible. Maybe because of the pre-safety instructions where it sort of implies (maybe it's just me) that if a plane were to land on water, I could just put on a life vest, get the raft and get off. Looking at that footage and the death toll, feels like a miracle even that many people survived.

That makes me wonder if being able to land a passenger plane on water is ever a factor in its design.

[krisoft]

> I don't know why I thought a controlled landing of a plane on water was generally possible.

Because it is possible and foldr is incorrect in stating that it is not possible.

On the video he linked panicked hijackers were fighting with the pilots for the controls. Clearly that is not an ideal scenario for any kind of landing. Even more so for a tricky water landing one. But that is more of a reason to avoid hijackers fighting with the pilots, not proof that ditching is impossible.

Water landings are clearly not the preferred way to land. They are very risky. But they are also not as impossible as that comment makes them out to be. Here is a list of them from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing

[foldr]

I didn't say that water landings in general are not possible (though they are difficult even under ideal conditions). I said that landing in the open ocean is not really something that has been done successfully in a modern airliner.

The closest example I could find in the list you link was the following. But it ditched a few miles from the coast and had much smaller engines than a typical modern passenger airliner. Also, it was a cargo flight with only the pilots on board, and the captain was seriously injured.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transair_Flight_810

[Sakos]

I'm looking at how many fatalities many of those incidents had and I'm not sure I'm convinced. They're not impossible, but the odds don't look great.

[DiggyJohnson]

Well that would be exactly right. I think people are confused because of some of the language you're using. Ditching is extremely dangerous and usually results in fatalities, but it's not impossible. There's a checklist for it.

[CalRobert]

It's definitely something that is considered, and the miracle on the Hudson included use of the A320's ditch mode if I recall correctly.

https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/358285-airbus-ditching-butto...

Looks to be in a few airbus models.

https://simpleflying.com/airbus-aircraft-ditch-switch-emerge...

If I recall correctly I've read that the bigger the plane the less likely it is to work but I don't have sources.