Contingency Plan

Air Safety Week, April 23, 2001

The March 4 dual engine loss on a United Airlines [UAL] twinjet over the Pacific had a happy ending. What about a more dire scenario, where the pilots face the real prospect of having to ditch the airplane? Not just from engine loss, but perhaps an even more threatening specter: in-flight fire. The message now being preached at many carriers (in the wake of the Swissair Flight 111 disaster) is to get the airplane down ASAP (as soon as possible), be it over land or water. As one pilot remarked to this publication, "The rapid descent and land scenario is logical to me, but only holds good to 1,000 feet agl (above ground level). What happens then?"

"The ditching does not end at 1,000 feet, it is only just beginning," he maintains. "Why are we stuck with so much of this bright yellow swimming equipment when so much of the planned-for scenario is ignored?" he asks.

Flight crews do not train to ditch. Simulators are not programmed to reproduce a ditching, and AOMs (aircraft operating manuals) are discretely silent on the procedures for ditching. Nothing seems to be written about how to ditch an aircraft even in the perfect conditions shown on the seat-back emergency cards: flat, calm water, in daylight (with the implicit assumption that engines were running and no raging electrical fire was eating the airplane's innards).

The airplane's ditching checklist usually provides a couple helpful suggestions: land along the swell; aim for a ship. The most important aspect may getting short shrift: the human factor, mainly fear, as pilots suddenly are forced to bring an aircraft down when they have never landed anything on water in their lives. This gear-up situation could well be a recipe for pilot induced oscillation (PIO) and the inevitable wing touch.

The anonymous pilot who laments the lack of preparation above says, "I have considered an autopilot approach and landing (to ditch), as the autopilot has no emotions and does not know where it is going to land. A rate of descent of 100 ft. per min. or so could be quite good," he suggested, adding quickly, "in ideal conditions." >TK