In the nick of time a hero arose a funny lookin' dog with a big black nose...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxzg_iM-T4E

Back to the topic at hand.

O.K. Here's a Kavanaugh editorial.
A few days ago if you asked any frequent flier what to do in a ditching they'd look back with blank stares.
Today somebody is putting up $10,000 for a statue of the pilot, Doctor Phil wieghed in as the self appointed arbiter of all things under God's sky and There's probably somebody pushing a made for T.V. movie with John Travolta as the lead.
And I bet anyone a bag of airline peanuts 6 months from now you ask frequent fliers about ditching procedures and they will stare blankly back at you.

First you have to make sure there are no snakes on the plane.

Instant news is transient noise.
I really want to know what the investigation comes up with when they are done.
It is seldom that plane crashes turn out this well and we might learn something about what to do instead of what not to do.

Like maybe contribute $10,000 to his research into human behaviour in crisis?

And, for the record: The snoopy flying doghouse was not my idea and I think there are still plans to build it.
Now, MY plane was a vastly superior airplane to the Fokker DR 1. I built a Sopwith Snipe as flown by William Barker.

Maybe.
If I had the money I would certainly consider doing that.
Much of the hard research has been done already, but nobody has really compiled it.

Hi, new to the forum, wondering if we could talk a bit more in detail and more critically about a few aspects of this incident. Please forgive me (and correct me) if this isn’t what the forum is for.

Overall, it sounds like mostly good news, but it seems to me that several areas could have been improved on. True, we got off in this case with no fatalities and only a limited number of injuries (all hypothermia cases). However, in terms of future planning both for the community and for ourselves as potential passengers, I think we need to view the events in terms of likely outcomes if this accident were repeated 100 times. In that case, we might be looking at an average of 10-25 deaths and 50-100 total casualties per incident – in other words, a serious accident. How could those numbers be reduced?

I’m no expert, but several possible areas occur to me. First, I’d like to hear more discussion about just how big a part pilot skill played here. Most people seem to be making the pilot out to be a hero, and that’s fine from a news-talking-point view, but if true, then it implies that most other pilots would not have done as well. Are we saying that 99% of pilots would have had a bad landing? 75%? 50%? Given the importance of water-ditching options as a means of averting fatalities, it seems to me that we should expect something like a 90% + success ratio here – is that unreasonable?

Second, what’s the rule (if any) on raft-capacity-to-passenger ratios? In other words, why are all those people standing on the wings and getting hypothermic? The NYTimes article says people on the wings were standing up to their waists or deeper while waiting to get rescued, and one guy said he couldn’t feel his legs when he was pulled aboard a boat. It also says some passengers made comments about “it’s like the Titanic, not enough boats for all.” Given the small space and weight of inflatable craft, should airlines be required to carry enough for all?

Third, passengers reported the wings to be slippery and several people slipped off and fell into the water. Since the wings seem to be an integral part of escape plans, shouldn’t they have a no-slip surface in places?

Fourth, what are the mechanics of transferring from a sinking plane to a ferry boat? The NYT article says at least some of the people had to jump into the water and swim to the rescue boats. Are ferry boats easy to enter from water level? How about from a raft? If I find myself in that situation, waist deep on the slippery wing with a rescue boat 10 feet off, am I better off being one of the first to swim to the boat, or waiting where I am on the wing?

Sorry to be so long winded on my first post, but I suspect there is a lot of knowledge here that hasn’t posted yet, and I’m just trying to draw it out for my future benefit.

Bilojax, Hi and welcome.
You raise very good questions.
I am no expert on airplanes, so my comments are just guesses.

There is a high likelihood that some of the hypothermia cases would have been fatalities if the rescue had not been as fast as it was.
That the rescue boats were available so quickly is largely due to pure luck in where the crash was.
Another point was that the plane had all the external vents sealed to slow the rate it was sinking at.
While this certainly helped if they had been forced to wait a few hours it likely would not have prevented some people from freezing to death.

I don't know about nonslip surfaces on the wings. It might not be possible over much of the wing, but near the exit points would certainly make sense.

I wonder about the raft deployment a lot too.
Getting them out of the water and out of the wind in a raft, huddled together for warmth, instead of standing on the wing should have helped

I was wondering a bit about the inflatable exit ramps themselves.
Maybe they could be made to float enough to keep people out of the water, like the rafts do.

Most people who have never been dunked into freezing water grossly overestimate their ability to swim or even to haul themselves out. Cold water chills you about 25 times as fast as air does.
It saps your strength to the point that at one minute most people are usually too cold to pull themselves out of the water. At 2 minutes the vast majority of people have stopped swimming and are starting to sink, their limbs are to cold to move.

A life jacket might keep your head above water.


An idea about the passenger's clothing.
Obviously most of them were dressed for the airport lounge, the airplane ride and the taxi ride from the airport when they landed, not for standing around waiting to be taken off an airplane wing.
They were certainly not dressed for cold water immersion.

Chris's comment about his survival suit was not a bad one. I thought he was joking at first, but after thinking about it a decent suit of Harris Tweed wool would have been a vast improvement over what most of the passengers were wearing.
I bet even a pair of long underwear would have been a vast improvement in most cases.

I think the investigation report on this one should be a very interesting read, both for what went right, and for what went wrong.
Thanks for bringing it back onto topic.
It is very easy to get distracted.

"Another point was that the plane had all the external vents sealed to slow the rate it was sinking at. "

It is being reported that the crew did not hit the ditch switch. If they did, I wonder how much longer it would have floated the plane?

I did not know that.
I thought they must have done it since the plane floated.
Yes, good point.