Quote:
Originally Posted by BlackArcher101
Sinking from the gear being down would be the last concern... when the gear touches the water first it will try to pitch the nose of the plane down and into the water, causing a catastrophic crash. The gear bay is also sealed from the rest of the aircraft to maintain cabin pressure.
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If you tried to land a large plane in the water with the gear down the force would tear apart the plane and even likely to cause an explosion where the mains rip off since the fuel cells are right above them. The idea is to "skip" along the water and pray like hell you can keep it level enough for a wing tip not to dig in.
In the video posted by Kipper (post #32) the reason so many people were killed is he lost airspeed trying to get as close to land as possible after it ran out of fuel.(not the pilots fault as he was instrucked to do this by the highjackers) This video is shown to commercial pilots of what not to do if you have to ditch, your chances are never great with a large aircraft ( i tried it on a 757 sim twice and failed badly) but if you can keep up enough airspeed to keep the wings level you have a chance as was proven yesterday.