GETTING WET THE KEYS TO EXECUTING AN UNINTENTIONAL WATER LANDING » By Phil Scott ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN KLEBER ull disclosure: I’ve never touched water with an airplane, save for that Sikorsky twin seaplane in the mid1990s. Both were—in flight attendant parlance–intentional water landings. I’ve flown landings and departures from short strips surrounded by water on three sides, even an undulating, narrow one surrounded by forest inside an oxbow lake. I’ve logged plenty of flights to Montauk, Nantucket, and from the George Washington Bridge down the Hudson to the Statue of Liberty and back. In Florida, I flew simulated search patterns with Mayte Greco in her Cessna 340 twin over the Gulf of Mexico—the same pattern she and her fellow Brothers to the Rescue once used to spot Cubans trying to raft it to the Free World. (That was before Cuban MiGs shot down two of their Cessna Skymasters in 1996.) Every time, nary a burp from the engine. F 38 / FLIGHTTRAINING.AOPA.ORGhttp://FLIGHTTRAINING.AOPA.ORG