Back in 2006, I blogged about a bunch of nonsense that they do on commercial airline flights, including the idiocy of schooling passengers on what to do in the “unlikely event of a water landing.”
My friend Peter Thompson‘s research found that there had been more than 150 million commercial flights since 1970 without a single water landing.
How rude of Chesley Sullenberger to make Peter Thompson start counting over from zero after saving 155 lives in a water landing yesterday. Doesn’t he know how long it takes to count to 150 million?
and 
. You can also watch it on 
My suggestions:
Why don’t they airlines have the instruction videos playing in a loop in the terminal?
For those on the window exit duty – how about a “training” real window exit door we can try out to see how really hard it is to open in the terminal as well?
I’m pretty certain there was an impromptu water landing back in the 90′s… if I recall correctly a terrorist armed with a knife tried to fly an airliner into a hotel… the pilots wrestled with the hijacker, missed the hotel, and hastily had to put it down in the water. Most people aboard survived, if I recall correctly.
Will have to try and dig up the news story…
Here you go, back in 1996. Pilot ditched in the ocean, 125 of 175 aboard died:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/1990s/nyt112596.html
Internationally, there have actually been 16 or so water ditching events according to Wikipedia…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditching#Survival_rates_of_passenger_plane_water_ditchings
So what would the probability of a water landing be now?
And how does that humble pie taste?
In the 70′s I remember a Japan Airlines flight hit the water right in front of the San Francisco Airport, he missed the runway on approach by about 2-300 yards. That was a water landing, I believe nobody was hurt.
Beck, the marketing executive, said he had flown all over the world on business but never bothered to read the seat-pocket emergency cards. “I wasn’t sure what to do” as the plane fell from the air, he said later. “I tried a few different positions. I ended up putting my arms on the chair in front of me and covering my head and face. All I could think about was that movie ‘Airplane’ where they say, ‘Assume crash positions,’ and everybody lays on the ground.”
http://mobile.washingtonpost.com/detail.jsp?key=339368&rc=to&p=1&all=1#___1__
I have concluded that the entire incident was a gift from “above” so we could all focus on this miracle versus a certain president’s farewell address to the nation.
To many amazing coincidences for it to be other wise …