Water Water Everywhere!
"The Short Amount of time to prepare is on the Jumpseat"Did you know that 44 out of 50 of the busiest United States airports are located within 5 miles of a significant body of water? How about that 194 out of 256 of the large airports worldwide have at least one overwater approach?

Over the past three decades of air travel the likelihood of a jet actually making a landing in the water and staying in one piece almost seemed something of a fairy tail. However, with the ditching of the Overseas National Airlines DC-9 off St Croix and Sully's famous landing in the Hudson river, it was shown that people can survive these accidents. Other incidents like and the hijacked Ethiopian Airlines 767 in the Indian Ocean and Air Florida Flight 90 have also shown us that there are still chances of survival even in  a non-level wing attempt to land. These however raised other concerns which will be listed later.
First, let’s start off by defining  terms:

According to the FAA a:

Ditching: is a planned emergency event in which good time allows to don life vests, warn flight attendants of proper evacuation procedures and the aircraft remains under control.

Inadvertent Water Landing: is an emergency landing in which there is little or no time for passengers and crew to prepare the cabin or themselves for the landing.

EOW: Extended Over Water Flight which is considered a route 50nm in horizontal distance from the coastline.

Flotation Equipment & Demo
On an Extended Over Water Flight or EOW, all flotation equipment must be mentioned in the safety briefing. Notice the key word, mentioned. Not demoed even though the FAR requires an oral demonstration of all equipment. However, the demos rarely if ever, will cover a water event happening on takeoff or landing.
Flotation Equipment onboard will vary in nature but generally includes Life Cots and Infant Life Vests for children weighing less than 35lbs, Adult Lifevests, Slide/Rafts, Auxiliary Life Rafts, and seat cushions.Personal Flotation
Seat Cushions:Seat Cushions, although wonderful flotation aids have a few problems associated with them. They are big and bulky, they take up space in the aisles and reduce critical maneuverability through exits, and especially the overwing exits can present a timely egress problem. Seat cushions also require passengers to grasp the cushion firmly to remain near the cushion. If for instance, the water is cold and the victim becomes overcome by hypothermia, the victim will lose grip and the cushion will float away causing the victim to drown.


Life Vests:The current life vest design has proven itself to be a very effective design. However with the era of cost cutting, airlines have experimented with the idea of single chamber life jackets. This may be cost effective but every now and then, one chamber fails to inflate. a dual chamber jacket would have a safety redundancy in it. Luckily, the jackets with one chamber still have the oral inflation tubes.
Oral Inflation Tubes:According to the FAA, the oral inflation tubes is the preferred method to inflating the life jacket because it gives the occupant most leeway with adjusting the vest to their desired inflation. However, once the vest becomes over inflated, the occupants generally panic because they do not know the proper way to let air out of the vest. Proper way to relieve inflation is to use the one finger "air quote" method on the tubes. Place your fingers into the tubes pushing down on the safety valve. You will feel the vest deflate slowly. This is a good method to re-adjust when entering the water. Wearing a collar shirt also protects the occupant from the vest rubbing against the neck creating irritation and a chocking feeling.

Crew Communication IssuesAs expected, most times than not, the Flight Attendant Manual and Flight Operations Manual will outline different procedures for water landings.

For example, in the "ditch switch" (a switch that needs to be moved in the flight deck) will not appear in the flight attendant manual where how to properly drop the sea anchor will not appear in the flight operations manual.Another thing that is generally overlooked but a very important factor is the fact that signals from flight deck to cabin may not be standardized even at the same airline. Flight attendants need to be aware of the events unfolding to have the upmost preparation in a short amount of time.

Some examples of the above topics include UsAirways Flight 1549 and Air Florida Flight 90 because both occurred in the frigid winter waters of the northeast in January. Further, other things to consider with these two accidents were they both happened on takeoff giving the crew very little time to react to the given situation, they both had post crash survival issues such as hypothermia, and the flight attendants needed to anticipate the emergency quickly on their own, on the Jumpseat!

Good practice is for flight attendants to conduct the following silent briefing on their jumpseat on an EOW:
1. What Commands Do Passengers Expect To Hear?
2. What Flotation Devices are onboard?
3. Where are the rafts?

Anticipation is the best defense against the unexpected!