Ditching of aeroplanes is very rare and most of us imagine a mid-sea ditched situation, which of course is extremely scary.

But when closer to land, it is better to ditch in water than force land in hard surface as you will never get an even surface (like a runway) to land on. Whereas, water is absolutely flat and does not have obstructions like towers, buidlings, rocks, trees etc.

Now comes the devil in details. Water is seldom flat. Closer to land, there are always waves and even in mid ocean, they have swells. It is difficult to spot them from height.

The Centre of Gravity of aeroplanes is always nose - heavy and hence, over water, the nose barely stays above the water line while the tail is high. Most planes, if perfectly ditched by the pilot, would stay afloat for half and hour to 45 minutes. Once the plane comes to halt (over water) your front doors would usually be below the water line and therefore, can't be opened. Evacuation is best from the emergency exits that are usually above the wings on all types of aeroplanes. So you get out, walk on the wing, get in the water and then can look toward heavens. Rear exits may be 5 to 10 m above the water line and jumping out from them may sound easy in theory but you must ask a non-swimmer made to jump into a swimming pool from a 5 - 10 m high diving board.

So, in an airline with inefficient cabin crew (guys, learn to respect those airhostesses) the passengers would scramble for the rear exit as they see it to be clearly above water and then finding it scary to jump, would run back to the middle or front. This forward running of passengers would shift the C of G forward and there, the nose would go inside water line and then may be God would help some one to survive and tell some Titanic story in future.

I personally think that Hudson river incident Captain and his crew need the greatest compliment for ensuring that all those passengers got out safely.

But I have digressed.

Another major problem with ditching is pilots do not have any practice. Nowadays, I am told that simulator exercises have come up and it has become mandatory for pilots to pass those simulator tests regularly.

As long as you have understood that the main concern is to keep the nose of the aeroplane above the water line at the time of touch down and deceleration, it is enough. And of course, the wings should be level till the time the aeroplane comes to a full stop because, if one wing dips and hits the water during deceleration, the whole plane would cart wheel and go on its back.