Emergency landings

[Dick Whit]

Just a musing really.
I've always been fascinated by the pictures in the seat back safety cards of an aeroplane resting neatly on the sea with the emergency shutes down.
At which week of pilot training is landing on the sea covered ?

[hailstone]

you mean watering , right ?

[WHBM]

Dick Whit:

You even do it in PPL groundschool.

"Land parallel to the waves and in the trough between them".

We laughed/said "Hmmmm" on the course, too .....

[Captain Airclues]

You should ditch the aircraft along, or parallel to, the primary swell. If possible it should be into wind but it is better to accept a crosswind than land against the swell. With large aircraft it is better to touch down on the crest, as in the trough you risk digging the wing into the swell.
I was taught ditching when I first joined an airline (BOAC) although only by films and lectures. For some reason they wouldn't let us try it in the aircraft.

Airclues

[Avman]

If you were flying Strats, Connies or DC-7s, Capt Airclues , I guess in those days it was statistically more of a likelyhood ;). I vaguely remember watching a Strat make a fairly good job of a ditching on the news in the late 50s. I doubt if today it would be possible (to make a textbook ditching) with a B747 say.

[Captain Airclues]

Not quite that old Avman. We had to watch a film, made by Vickers, about ditching a VC10. The tests were carried out at a long pool, the maritime eqivalent of a wind tunnel, that was used to design oil tankers. A large model VC10 was fired at the pool with various wave and swell conditions and at various attitudes. Vickers then devised some recommended techniques for a successful ditching. I'm sure that this film probably survives in an archive somewhere.
I'm sure that a 747 would be much the same although I don't intend to try it. :)

Airclues

[Notso Fantastic]

I well remember that film! Lovely model about 10' wingspan repeatedly landed on varying waves. Keep wheels up, full flap and minimise speed. Expected to be very survivable as long as a wing didn't dig in (Maldives Ethiopian 767). There have been many landings on water with structural integrity maintained. I even remember a JAL DC-8 that landed in Tokyo Bay on final approach was recovered and actually flew again.

[Wycombe]

....remember it also putting out the fire in the wing of a Nimrod some years ago

[WHBM]

Notso:

The Japan AL DC8 that was recovered went into San Francisco Bay. Presumably as they were on finals the gear was down. Here's the detail:

http://aviation-safety.net/database/1968/681122-0.htm

[Notso Fantastic]

....Ooops! Well it was a long time ago. I remember the gossip was that they were doing a nice stable autocoupled to the ILS approach- except the ILS wasn't on (or was it VOR coupled approach?). Still it came down in water and flew again. Bit more than blowing seaweed out of the engines and getting Captain Nemo out of the hold, but it flew.

[No comment]

Last I heard that DC-8 is still flying over in the states!

Two other non-fatal ditchings couple of years ago now were the TAAT 707 and DAS DC-10 (within a few weeks of each other I think) in Lake Victoria.

Far as I remember the -10 ended up in a couple of bits but the 707 made quite a decent job of it. Completely by accident too as the the altimeter played up (or was set wrong) and so the aircraft made a perfect approach into the drink. Only damage was where the gear and engines had been ripped off. Ironically the flight was arriving to pick up fish from said lake...

[Captain Airclues]

Notso was right the first time. In 1982, JAL DC-8 suffered a pilot induced ditching in Tokyo Bay a few hundred yards short of Haneda Airport, killing 24 people. Not sure whether the aircraft flew again though.

Airclues

[Notso Fantastic]

Yes, that was the one where the Captain had some sort of brainstorm and decided to land in water for the hell of it. I'm fairly certain that one never flew again.

[Onan the Clumsy]

I've seen pics of the Lake Victoria 707 - still floating in the morning and towed to shore.

AOPA pilot had an article on ditching once and illustrated the point with several shots taken from a coastguard vessel of a 182 ditching I think everyone survived too. :ok: