A water landing is, in the broadest sense, any landing on a body of water. All waterfowl, those seabirds capable of flight, and some human-built vehicles are capable of landing in water as a matter of course.
The phrase "water landing" is also used as a euphemism for crash-landing into water in an aircraft not designed for the purpose. The National Transportation Safety Board of the United States government defines "ditching" in its aviation accident coding manual as "a planned event in which a flight crew knowingly makes a controlled emergency landing in water. (Excludes float plane landings in normal water landing areas.)" Such water landings are extremely rare for commercial passenger airlines.
Read more about Water Landing: By Design, In Distress, Water Bird Emergency Landing Technique
Famous quotes containing the words water and/or landing:
“Man is but a reed, the feeblest one in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him—a vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)