Remember kids, according to an FAA review of accidents, no type of water ditching has lower than an eighty percent survivability rating. So putting it in the drink is always an option.
80% survivability…for the black box
Not really sure what “water ditching” means but I assume that’s any time the airplane ends up in the water instead of on land?
If that’s a case, then there’s definitely the type of water ditching where the plane angles into the water at full speed, and I don’t think that’s gonna have 80%
I think ditching implies some control over the aircraft, versus straight crashing.
Maybe. Can anyone illuminate the 80% statistic? I’d like to know what it actually means.
EDIT: Love when I ask a good-faith question and it gets downvotes because someone answered it.
Not maybe, yes. Thats what it means. “Water ditching” is a common colloquial name for an “emergency water landing” which is a type of emergency landing. A plane doing a nose dive straight into the water is not an emergency landing. That’s just a run of the mill crash.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing
The US forest service says it’s 90% but I’m not sure where they get that number from either.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5139786.pdf
Flight instructor here: “ditching” is the technical term for landing a land plane on water. Here’s the procedure from the Pilots Operating Handbook of a Cessna 172S:
then there’s definitely the type of water ditching where the plane angles into the water at full speed, and I don’t think that’s gonna have 80%
Pretty sure last time that happened it was still ~30%, which seems pretty impressive considering the video: https://youtu.be/w1u0D0E-Bq0 (SFW but it is a plane crashing)
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961
I’m pretty sure by “type of ditching” OP means the water conditions. Ditching near the beach is often safer a roadway landing. The least safe is ditching in rough seas in the middle of the ocean, but even that has a surprisingly high survival rate. Pilots don’t always know this, and sometimes give up, not knowing that if they glide the airplane carefully down to the water, their chances of living are pretty good.
I wanna see a source plz
https://www.aviationsafetymagazine.com/features/the-myths-of-ditching/
Sorry for the wait. I had family visiting and completely forgot about my comment. I believe I recall an FAA study with similar findings, but I can’t find it atm.
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I think they’re saying you’ll survive the landing. What happens after is more variable
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Surprisingly, no. They counted deaths from exposure, drowning, etc as fatalities in this study: https://www.aviationsafetymagazine.com/features/the-myths-of-ditching/
This is just a review of NTSB data and some ditchings may have gone unreported. The main point is that ditching, even in the open ocean is very survivable.
