Ask most any pilot, and he’ll tell you: “Any landing you can walk away from, is
a good landing”.
But there’s no such thing as a totally safe emergency airplane landing, especially if
it has to land on water.
Yet some gifted pilots can do wonders with their metal-winged birds, even if those birds
are huge airliners with lots of people on board!
I’m going to share with you stories about 4 times airplanes landed on the water without
any major injuries to the passengers.
Before we begin, let’s get one thing straight: why is landing on water still called landing
if there’s no land?
It can’t be called watering either, that would be strange.
Fortunately, aviation thought it out, and landing a plane on water has its own special
term now.
It’s called ditching, and this task is one of the hardest for pilots.
Period.
Mainly because it’s almost impossible to train pilots to deal with this situation.
Especially if we’re talking about 1956, when there were no training simulations available.
It was that year when the first ever successful ditching of a passenger airplane was executed.
And not just an airplane, but a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, a huge liner with 4 engines
– one of the first airplanes with a pressurized cabin and double-deck feature!
With this double-deck, it could take up to 100 passengers on board.
But on this day, October 16, 1956, there were only 24 passengers and 7 members of the aircrew
on the plane.
The Pan Am Flight 6 was supposed to be an around-the-world flight with several stops
along the way.
This was its last take-off from Honolulu before arriving at the destination point in San Francisco.
Unfortunately, at the half-way point, when the plane was climbing in altitude, one of
the Boeing’s engines violated its speed limit and stopped.
Slowly but surely, the plane started to get closer to the sea, unable to keep the altitude.
It didn’t help that another engine, engine number 4, also started to malfunction.
But still, pilots managed to distribute the workload to the three remaining engines and
keep an altitude of 5,000 ft.
Still, another problem remained unresolved: they didn’t have enough fuel to fly like
this either to San Francisco or back to Honolulu.
Ditching was the only option, but it was nighttime, and it was too dark to manage it.
I know this situation sounds pretty scary, but this is actually the convenient part,
because they had to burn as much fuel as possible until dawn.
The less the weight of the plane, the easier it is to land it.
The daylight helped the pilots immensely, since the surface of the sea is always changing;
there are always waves.
And to successfully ditch a plane, pilots have to ditch it right between two waves,
going perpendicular to the wind direction.
Otherwise, the plane will just break in half.
Yes, the surface of the water is no softer than asphalt for landing a plane.
And if a plane even tried to release its landing gear when ditching, waves would just break
the wheels off and water would stream into the hatches.
Bad idea!
As you can imagine, this would drastically decrease the time a plane might stay afloat.
And that’s the last thing you would want when awaiting rescue in the middle of the
ocean.
Fortunately for the people on board Pan Am Flight 6, they didn’t have to wait at all.
The ditch was performed early in the morning at the speed of 103 mi/h.
The fuselage couldn’t take the beating and broke off.
It took only 17 minutes for the plane to sink.
And after that, all 31 people on the plane were absolutely safe!
The rescue ended only 3 minutes before it sank to the bottom.
In this case, applauding the pilots certainly wasn’t enough.
They achieved something unheard of.
But they’re not the only ones to pull this kind of stunt, there are other examples!
In the summer of 1963.
The Tupolev Tu-124 airplane with 52 people on board was circling around in the skies
above Saint Petersburg, Russia, trying to find a way to ditch on the Neva River.
Problems with this flight began immediately after the plane took off in Tallinn.
The front gear of the plane wasn’t able to retract, but the plane couldn’t turn
back – the weather was too foggy for that.
As the flight was supposed to end in Moscow, the closest place to land safely along the
way was in Saint Petersburg.
The ground services of the local airport couldn’t prepare the runway in time.
The Tu-124 was running out of fuel too quickly.
Soon, one of the engines ran out of gas and stopped.
The pilots knew they’d have to be responsible not only for the lives of those on board,
but also for the lives of citizens below, who didn’t even know about the danger in
the skies above.
The decision to ditch on the Neva River was inevitable.
The pilots managed not only to ditch on the river in the middle of the city, but also
barely missed crashing into one of the bridges.
And still, 52 people were alive and well after this event.
Call it a miracle if you want, but I would call it a heroic deed with no shadow of a
doubt.
But miracles certainly exist.
You see, it’s one thing to take a risk and ditch a plane into the river or the ocean…but
it’s quite another to ditch a plane on water unknowingly, and do it perfectly and with
no casualties at all.
This is what happened to Japan Airlines Flight 2.
The Douglas DC-8 ditched on the water near the San Francisco coast.
The first reports about these events were shocking: “A large jetliner crashed into
San Francisco Bay today.
The Coast Guard reported the plane was spotted in dense fog upside down.”
In reality, things weren’t as crazy as written, but only a little less strange.
The pilot of the DC-8 didn’t even know he was landing on water.
The Ground Control also didn’t notice any problems with the navigation.
But in reality, the plane was 2.5 miles away from the runway.
This error was made due to the low visibility caused by fog.
By the time the pilot could see what he was doing, it was too late.
What was especially lucky for the passengers, is that the plane wasn’t far off the bay.
The sea there was only 23 feet deep, and the DC-8 just couldn’t possibly sink.
96 passengers and 11 crew members were absolutely untouched; there wasn’t a single bruise
on them.
They were all soon rescued on police and Coast Guard boats.
And finally, the record holder for the number of people on board a ditching plane – Airbus
A320 of US Airways, Flight 1549.
Also known as the “Miracle of the Hudson” Flight.
It happened 10 years ago, on January 15.
The cause of this would-be catastrophic event was nothing more than a flock of geese which
struck the engines.
But thanks to the mastery of the Airbus’ pilots, and ingenuity of its construction,
the 155 people on board remained uninjured.
Engineers that were working on the Airbus A320 payed attention to the accidents I was
telling you about before.
This plane has a “ditching button”, that helps a plane to stay afloat for a longer
period after landing.
It seals most of the recesses in the lower part of the plane to stop water from leaking
inside.
This would’ve helped the Miracle on the Hudson, but pilots had very little time to
prepare for ditching, because the birds killed both engines of the Airbus.
There was no power to keep it aloft.
It happened at an altitude of almost 3,000 ft.
The only option was to glide down and hope that the best solution to the problem would
come to mind as soon as possible.
Along their descent, they asked for permission to land on nearby runways, but they knew that
the only solution was obvious.
And it was right in front of the Airbus A320 – the great Hudson River.
The ditching itself wasn’t the softest ever, but it was the most successful.
The pilots didn’t leave the plane until they were sure everyone else had been evacuated.
The most remarkable thing about that ditching is how precise it was, even without any engine
throttle.
The plane ditched near several tourist boats already in the Hudson.
So, help was received soon, and no boats were struck by the plane either!
Which of these stories left you the most impressed?
Let us know in the comment section!
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