One thing disturbs me.
I have in mind four cases where an airliner did a ditch landing
- Cactus 1549
- A jetstream on takeoff from a northern country where both engines stopped cause ice accumulated during stop, or something else
- The Tunintair ATR
- Ethiopan 767 after the hijack
And a fifth where the aircraft almost did a ditch landing
- Air Transat A330 who landed in acores
All of these flights ditched because of no more power --> (3/5 - no more fuel ; 2/5 loss of power on both engines due to ice / birds)
And in all my aviation knowledge, I don't have any (or a very few maybe) cases of airliners (> 20 pax) who did a controlled and voluntereed crashed with fuel remaining.
Generally speaking, when an aircraft crash outside an airfield area, it's because
- the pilots can no longer control the aircraft
- loss of spatial and geographical orientation
- loss of ability to maintain speed and altitude (generally induced by loss of power)
So my question is : Am I the only one to find the procedure described is totally useless. Because it seems to need to have power (Vref and -300 fpm) and in mostly cases, when ditching, you have no more power ?