I guess the only point I was trying to make was that, had the CC and passengers been advised that a water landing was in the offing, the rear door might have remained closed and the quantity of water that rushed in might not have rushed in.
Even though this scenario was pretty much executed flawlessly and the outcome couldn't have been better (everyone survived), one of the tasks that the FAA and NTSB instinctively does is look at a situation such as this and say, "What can we learn from this? What could have been done differently that might have made for an even better outcome?"
It's very easy to "armchair quarterback" and play the "coulda, woulda shoulda" game. Don't get me wrong. This flight crew deserves medals. There probably wasn't some hard and fast rule or policy that said that the captain was required to inform everybody of a water landing if a water landing was imminent. So, in my book, he did nothing wrong. But, supposing he did advise everyone that the plane was going to make a water landing, it is possible that the woman passenger might not have rushed to the rear of the cabin and opened the door.
Here's another example where an employee actions, even though not part of his requirements, might have lead to a different outcome.
On September 12, 2008 a Metrolink commuter train had a head on collision with a Union Pacific freight train on the outskirts of Los Angeles. 25 people died, including the Metrolink engineer, and dozens were injured. The NTSB is about to release their official report in a few weeks and they've basically concluded that the engineer was distracted from interpreting wayside signals because he was busy text messaging. Complacency is one of the worst enemies of transportation operating crews. When someone does the same routine, year in and year out, and they feel they can operate a train or fly a plane on "auto pilot", without having to genuinely think, is when they can really find themselves in trouble. Pilots have found themselves in the jackpot when complacency or distraction has caused them to overlook something as basic as extending the slats prior to takeoff. This engineer was so bored with his identical day-to-day routine, that he apparently thought he could run a train and text message simultaneously. Every day, for weeks on end, his train would meet this particular scheduled freight train at a siding near Simi Valley, CA. However, on the day the collision happened, a slight "tweak" in the operating plan caused the dispatcher set up the meet at a siding several miles to the east of where it was normally performed. Thus, there was a "break" in the day-to-day routine that the Metrolink engineer was used to.
Even though he wasn't required to, had the dispatcher gotten on the radio and informed both trains of the revised meeting location, the collision might have been prevented. I say "might have." Both engineers would have been furnished with that little tidbit of information that might have made all the difference.
ONTPax