Emergency water landings are worse than one on land.
A generalization which is not factual. The surface upon which you will arrive has a lot to do with survivabily, no matter how you got there. I would rather fly a controlled approach to a forced landing on any more or less horizontal surface, than into trees or a mountain side, for example. Doing it in an RG aircraft offers an even better chance of success on other than suitable runway surfaces.
The safest way to fly over water is with an all-airframe parachute…
To use it, I would have to give up control of the aircraft I was flying. I cannot imagine why I would want to do that, if I can fly the aircraft to an approach and landing – even power off to an unwelcoming surface. The safest way to fly over water is in a well maintained aircraft, on a well planned flight, with adequate fuel, and suitable emergency equipment. Better yet, in a flying boat!
I have flown hundreds of hours over “land” which was so unwelcoming, I was diverting a little to be closer to lakes or ocean to land in if it quit!
Pick a spot!
Pilot_DAR wrote:
A generalization which is not factual
Sure it is…many think water is just empty space. In fact, water is like hard concrete when mass/energy is involved. And the water can often contain chunks of wood, rocks, or other hazards.
Ever seen what happens when passenger planes hit the ocean? Blunt force death. Few to none survive.
In a high wing, the cockpit goes underwater first….get ready to drown.
If you don’t have floatation devices get ready to drown.
Make sure your low wing plane has wings dead level, or you will cartwheel and break up.
Planes with non retractable gear are going to flip.
Make sure you are close to shore or get ready to drown.
If a wing comes off, get ready for fuel in the water and in your lungs.
Here is a water landing you may want to check out, it was John Denver the singer just off the coast of California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Denver
Ever seen what happens when passenger planes hit the ocean? Blunt force death. Few to none survive.
If out of control, yes, but that’s irrelevant here.
In a high wing, the cockpit goes underwater first….get ready to drown.
It does that in any front-engined plane, which is why you can’t sit there phoning for a pizza. You have to get out ASAP. Irrelevant, unless you are unconscious or injured.
If you don’t have floatation devices get ready to drown.
Probably true. Which is why I always say people should carry a raft.
Planes with non retractable gear are going to flip.
Maybe your CTLS will but the ditching data of normal planes doesn’t support that.
Make sure you are close to shore or get ready to drown.
In Africa, maybe.
Here is a water landing you may want to check out, it was John Denver the singer just off the coast of California
That one is well known. For a start, he was flying one of the many homebuilts whose stall speed is, ahem, not well defined…. A flimsy little plane whose controllable Vs is realistically about 80-90kt is not going to be great for any kind of forced landing, land or water. But basically he ran out of fuel.
BeechBaby wrote:
The actual temperature of the Baltic, deeper layers, remains constant at 4-6 degrees. Admittedly, the surface temperature varies, anywhere between 4-25 degrees, but this can be very isolated, and is wholly dependent on air temperature, and weather. And is totally seasonal. The problem lies in the salinity, and brackishness, of the Baltic Archipelago.
No argument. But of course it is seasonal and that was implied in my posting. The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological institute state on their website that the maximum typical sea surface temperature in the Baltic is around 20°C in August. The “deeper layers” in that case start at about 30 m depth.
The Nordic SWC includes sea surface temperatures – and that’s not along the coastline or in the archipelagoes but in the open sea. It’s common to see 16°C in summer.
USFlyer wrote:
Sure it is…many think water is just empty space. In fact, water is like hard concrete when mass/energy is involved. And the water can often contain chunks of wood, rocks, or other hazards.
A topic we have covered many times, and it all comes down to personal preferences. There are those who only fly on a warm summers day and there are those who set out to cross oceans for no apparent reason.
One thing I do notice though, as a Scandi living in the UK, is the surprising fear of water among British pilots – some airfields even do special courses for crossing the channel and these are being attended by grown up men and women. Aside from the language barrier, i think it comes down to the fact that the Southern part of the British Isles is covered in airfields and between those are often perfectly manicured fields (well, golf courses in the proximity of London). Compare that to the reality of say Sweden or Norway where an off airfield landing is very likely to be in a pine forest or mountainous area where you can be several days walk from the nearest town if you walk the wrong way. I can understand why the Swedes here feel quite comfortable flying over ocean where you can be easily spotted.
Now, with regards to the calculation on glide distance. The sad reality in many places is, that you can’t get high enough to get a reasonable glide distance, unless you have an IR and IRs are rare in the EASA system. If you could cross DVR KOKSY at FL150, you would have a lot less of an issue. Not to speak of having to duck under Schipol Class A at 1500ft mid channel if you go a little further North.
some airfields even do special courses for crossing the channel and these are being attended by grown up men and women
That’s a UK peculiarity I think. Obviously they should teach how to fly to say le Touquet within the PPL…
But more to the point, where I was based, you could not rent a plane unless you had the “cross channel checkout” signed off in the logbook.
you can’t get high enough to get a reasonable glide distance, unless you have an IR and IRs are rare in the EASA system.
Often it doesn’t help because e.g. the LYD departures from Le Touquet go straight out over the water. Whereas a VFR departure could be used to follow the coast and then make the short crossing to the UK.
Peter wrote:
Often it doesn’t help because e.g. the LYD departures from Le Touquet go straight out over the water. Whereas a VFR departure could be used to follow the coast and then make the short crossing to the UK.
I had in mind that you would go a little further than Le Touquet 
Any costal airport will have the issue of you being low over the water – Ostend once cleared me “not above 1000ft” for a direct via Manston…until I kindly requested a little more hight.
mmgreve wrote:
Ostend once cleared me “not above 1000ft” for a direct via Manston…until I kindly requested a little more hight.
A similar thing happened to me on a VFR departure from Dubrovnik’s runway 12 northbound. They had some airliner on approach, so we were instructed to make an immediate right turn after departure (towards the sea) “not above 500 ft”. Only that the field elevation is 527 ft, so you had to dive towards the sea (with some morning fog above it) to meet this clearance… interesting feeling, but then very scenic towards the city.
USFlyer wrote:
Sure it is…many think water is just empty space. In fact, water is like hard concrete when mass/energy is involved. And the water can often contain chunks of wood, rocks, or other hazards.Ever seen what happens when passenger planes hit the ocean? Blunt force death. Few to none survive.
In a high wing, the cockpit goes underwater first….get ready to drown.
If you don’t have floatation devices get ready to drown.
Make sure your low wing plane has wings dead level, or you will cartwheel and break up.
Planes with non retractable gear are going to flip.
Make sure you are close to shore or get ready to drown.
If a wing comes off, get ready for fuel in the water and in your lungs.Here is a water landing you may want to check out, it was John Denver the singer just off the coast of California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Denver
Let’s start with John Denver – that wasn’t a water landing, that was a crash.
There is no evidence that fixed gear planes are going to flip, and even if they do, it doesn’t affect egress rate. I have seen more than one sequence of photos of a fixed gear plane not flipping when being ditched, and an old CAA safety sense leaflet even had a picture of an upright low wing fixed gear homebuilt type floating around in the Irish Sea.
Second, let’s start with “water is like hard concrete.” That’s also not true. If it were, I could just set down on it no problem. Water is only “like concrete” if you crash into it, but so is land. An under control ditching on the other hand isn’t crashing, it’s arriving at the water’s surface under control. The aircraft won’t suddenly stop or cartwheel. You’re unlikely to drown in a high wing plane. High wing planes are unlikely to flip (and if they do, it doesn’t seem to affect egress rate). I know someone who ditched a Twin Comanche. She did a normal landing on the water’s surface, and apart from the rapid deceleration and unpleasant cold wetness, her only injury was a broken fingernail – this is an aircraft with quite a high landing speed. Airliners have been ditched and where they arrive wings level and under control, people tend to get out (the famous example being the Hudson River ditching, but there have been others – one notably which had large loss of lives was not because the ditching was unsucessful despite arriving not wings level and dragging a wingtip – was because passengers started inflating their lifejackets inside the cabin and got trapped).
Given the egress rate is over 90%, drowning isn’t the problem. The issue is after egressing – not having lifejackets, not having a liferaft, or in cooler waters, not having some kind of drysuit – in other words, hypothermia. I remember one incident where a young guy in the US was flying back to college in his family’s Cherokee (Warrior or 180, I don’t remember which) at night and ran out of fuel (after 5 hours!) – he ditched, at night, in Lake Michigan. His plane didn’t flip and he even phoned 911 standing on the wing of his plane. He was a strong swimmer and tried to swim. Hypothermia got him within 15 minutes. Trying to swim will just mean your body heat gets taken away even faster.
Finally I leave you with this where someone has torpedoed the ditching myths that you’ve learned: http://www.equipped.com/ditchingmyths.htm
I’d agree that generally ditching is a worse option than a forced landing on land. In a ditching, airframe loss is guaranteed, whereas a forced landing over pastureland if you do it right you can fix the plane and fly it back out the very same pasture. However, there are certain types of land (even in the UK) where a ditching is more likely to have a good outcome. There’s plenty of bits of Scotland for instance where there are scant places for a successful forced landing and everything else is cumulogranite.
