"All right." He starts reading it out. 

Send distress signals. Determine position, course, speed, altitude, situation, intention, time and position of intended touchdown and transmit mayday. Report type of aircraft and request intercept.

"I'm hoping if we fly in low and slow over the fishing village or whatever it is they'll figure we've got a problem and help with evacuation. But we probably want to land close enough to shore we can paddle the rafts in without help in a worst case scenario."

"Water near the shore is going to be shallow, though, and if we break up on some rocks we lose everybody."

"Yep. I don't know what the ideal guess is, without knowing anything about Lake Mystery. Half a mile out to sea?"

"We don't have enough life rafts for everyone if the aft rafts don't deploy, and they probably won't, if that part of the plane's submerged. Some people will be swimming with life vests, or hanging off the edges - half a mile out is also pretty hard on would-be fishing boat rescuers. They're going to have to make a lot of trips. How deep do we need?"

"The checklist doesn't say?"

"No."

"I think 1549's nose fully submerged while decelerating and then popped back up? Which would be, what, how tall is this guy -"

That's in the handbook. "Forty feet."

"Unfortunately I also don't know anything about lakes and don't know if that is a usual depth for a lake or not or what would alert us to whether Lake Mystery is a deep lake." He banks gently so the airplane can follow the lake around.

Alert the cabin crew to prepare for ditching and seat passengers as far forward as possible.

"Should I do that now?"

"Not yet, we're going to be in the air at least another hour and now that we've determined that this is an inhabited place I'm still hoping we can find an airport."

3 Burn off fuel to reduce touchdown speed and increase buoyancy.

4 Plan to touch down on the windward side and parallel to waves and swells.

5 Plan a flaps 40 landing unless another configuration is needed.

6 Set VREF 40.

7 Do not arm the autobrake.

8 Do not accomplish the normal landing checklist.

9 Checklist Complete Except Deferred Items.

"Makes it sound easy."

"How much fuel are you thinking of landing with?"

"- enough for one go-around, if there are no new developments? The plane's buoyancy sounds important, and we don't have a second location to divert to, and the less fuel on one's crashing airplane the better, really, as long as the engines are still running. Say we plan to land at 2,000 pounds."

That's one of the inputs for the VREF 40 calculation, which will tell them what speed to target as they try to land. You want to hit the water as slowly as you can, of course, but a plane that is going too slowly stalls and falls out of the air, and that's wildly more deadly than a successful landing with a vertical descent of nearly nothing. He puts it into the computer; they can change it later if they change their mind about what weight to land at. 

After Impact Procedure Review

Set both engine start levers to CUTOFF. This closes fuel shutoff valves to prevent discharge of fuel from ruptured fuel lines.

Open flight deck windows. This ensures no cabin differential pressure prevents the opening of the doors or emergency exits.

Start the evacuation. Proceed to assigned ditching stations, launch rafts and evacuate the airplane as soon as practicable.

The airplane may stay afloat indefinitely if fuel load is minimal and no serious damage was sustained during landing. 

"Engine start levers to cut off, open flight deck windows, start the evacuation. I think we should seriously prioritize the thing where the aircraft floats indefinitely, given the uncertain rescue situation and that this is going to be a slow passenger evacuation."

"I figured that when you said you want to land at 2,000 pounds. Uh, deferred checklist items are -

Below 5000 feet

LANDING GEAR AURAL WARN circuit breaker (P6-3:D18) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pull

This prevents the warning horn with gear retracted and landing flaps selected.

The flight deck chime for an incoming call from the cabin crew is unavailable.

Passenger signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ON

Engine BLEED air switches (both) . . . . . . . . . . OFF

This allows the airplane to be depressurized with the outflow valve closed.

Pressurization mode selector . . . . . . . . . . . . . MAN

Outflow VALVE switch . . . . . . . . . . . Hold in CLOSE until the outflow VALVE indication shows fully closed. 

This prevents water from entering the airplane. Note: the outflow valve takes up to 20 seconds to close. 

APU switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OFF

GROUND PROXIMITY GEAR INHIBIT switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GEAR INHIBIT

 

GROUND PROXIMITY TERR INHIBIT switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . TERR INHIBIT

Life vests, shoulder harnesses and seat belts . . . On

Confirm that passenger cabin preparations are complete.

They're not actually doing the checklist yet - he's still hoping that if he follows this coastline long enough there will appear some more serious signs of civilization, and an alternative to the ditching - but it's useful to know what to expect, because once they're getting close their lives are going to be very stressful. He stands up to get a different angle on the ground outside the plane. There's still just - not that much out there. Lots of trees, lots of scrubland, not a single recognizable asphalt road. 

A field would not have to be a very good field to be an improvement on a water landing. Water landings are dangerous, and hard, and a lot of things have to go right, and some of them are out of his control. He'd take a cornfield, any cornfield. 

He just doesn't see any.

"Broadcast intent to descend to 100 for better visibility, and that we're preparing for a water landing. And then tell the cabin crew to prepare for it, I guess."

He broadcasts on the emergency frequency and then on some other frequencies. There's no response. 

He head back out to find the lead flight attendant. 

"We're going to be making an emergency landing, likely in the water."

"All right. When?"

"An hour to ninety minutes, we want to land light and we want to keep looking if there's some bigger city we can land near. It may be a while before we can expect support from emergency services."

"Our phones should work once we're on the ground, right?"

"...probably not because we're probably not in the United States."