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...after apparently losing power in both engines. In aviation terminology, that type of landing is referred to as ditching, and as far as jetliners go it remains a fairly rare event. Curtis could only find three other instances when a flight crew of a commercial jetliner intentionally ditched a plane on water - and one of those occurrences that Curtis found, a 1963 incident involving an Aeroflot Tupolev Tu124 en route from Estonia to Moscow, yielded a 100% survival rate...
...Every other crash - including some of the famous ones, like the one that happened 27 years ago this week with Air Florida in Washington and TWA Flight 800 and the Egypt Air event in 1999 - these were all cases that the plane had clearly crashed in the water, but did so in an uncontrolled way," says Curtis. Water landings can result in fatalities as well; in 1970, an ALM airlines flight from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport to the island of St. Maarten ran out of fuel after missing three approaches in heavy weather, forcing the pilot...
...addition to studying computer simulations of water landings, airline pilots also undergo training in flight simulators, according to Laura Brown, a spokesperson for the FAA. (They don't practice water landings in real planes for obvious reasons.) Most modern planes have controls that allow a pilot to close all air vents and openings in the plane to keep the aircraft buoyant in the water. Pilots are instructed to keep the nose up slightly, but not so much that the aircraft slams down roughly on contact. They also are supposed to keep the wings level to prevent one from being clipped...
...birds and when it touched water, the two pilots in the cockpit were tasked with deciding what options they had as they glided dangerously over northern New York City. The choice of landing in water likely seemed the best option considering those circumstances. Pilots are trained to bring planes in for a smooth landing on water the same way that they would on land, keeping landing gear stowed to make the plane more boat-like. They also have different ditching checklists depending on whether they are above or below 10,000 feet - Flight 1549 was at about 3,000 feet...
...Survive a Plane Crash...