No.
Obviously, an aircraft engine stops working once the air supply is cut off. Anyone who’s tried rowing will know how quicky even a hydrodymically efficient body loses forward mmentum due to friction.
An aircraft hitting a brick wall or a water surface is basically like a collection of tin foil. As the Comoros Islands video shows, when the wingtip catches, the force of the spin breaks the plane fuselage in three pieces - and that was an attempt to pull a Sullenberger that failed.
However, Sullenberger was flying a smaller plane - an Airbus A320, the equivalent of a 737 and quite a buit smaller than a 777; the stall speed was somewhat lower, and the river was a lot calmer than open seas so less likely that one side clips a wave.
So an aircraft going straight in will break up. the simplest type of uncontrolled landing would be that of the Air France plane - pancaked in flat due to conflicting pilot controls. It broke into multiple pieces, the tail was still floating in one piece. Nose first, you might as well hit a brick wall. If you’ve ever seen what a wave can do to an unsuspecting person or structure, imagine the same thing at 150mph or 600mph. Aircraft are built for lightness, not speed. Real ships are made of several inches of steel. they float because they are watertight, but even they (think Titanic) will break in pieces if not supported along the entire length. Aircraft are tissue by comparison.
Assuming it landed intact like Sullenberger, it would float for a while. His plane began sinking in a matter of minues as some clever passenger opened the rear door and the cabin began filling up with water.
Water dynamics 101 - things made of metal float when there are air spaces inside. Opening the overwing exits or the door will eventually let water in and air escape. The body of the aircraft is designed to resist loss of pressure, so it’s pretty air-tight. the question is whether a rough landing (as this would be) rips any holes in that seal. If so, the plane will start to sink. It may take hours if nobody’s alive to open anything. Usually, though, a ditched plane is full of passengers in a hurry to get out who open a lot of holes. Then water seeps up from below, or enters the lowest door.
Airport 77(?) where a fully inflated jumbo jet sinks is stupid on so many levels, even for Hollywood script writers.
So how does it sink? Depends on a lot of things. You would think an intact jet would sink the way it flies, gliding to the floor below. However, the weigt and balance may be completely different underwater. If Someone flooded the aircraft from the back, for example, the back sinks first, maybe causing a significant air bubble trapped in the cockpit are, and it descends tail first. Intact air pockets in the wing or tail might also alter that balance - until the pressure causes these to buckle like a crushed beer can. meanwhile, funny angles or broken cargo doors may cause the luggage and cargo to shift, altering the balance which was never designed for water anyway. Also, the wing shapes are designed for airflow, not water, so the “flying” capabilities are going to be very different. (Air can expand and compress, water can’t - this creates different “flight” characteristics.)
My wild-assed uneducated gues is the thing either goes nose first or tail-first to the bottom, with possibly some random meadering like a heavy feather. However, if water can get in relatively easily it will not squash like a beer can, but remain relatively intact.
No one’s arguing that point. The OP, however, is asking about airplanes, not ducks.
Someone’s been watching Airport '77.
I know this question has already been answered, but PopSci just did an article* about a submersible that uses the Bernoulli effect and airplane style control surfaces to manuever underwater. I thought I’d pass it along so interested folks can see how an airplane-like object would work underwater.
Here’s the link for the second picture, which shows tail fins and mentions how it works: http://www.cnet.com/pictures/with-deepflight-flying-underwaters-a-joy-pictures/2/
- actually, it’s just a gallery: a series of interesting pics with a short explanation (a couple sentences or so) for each.
And flying boats were notoriously prone to crashing on take-off or landing because water is disturbingly unpredictable from an aviation perspective.
I’ve read about the latest theory about MH370, they believe that if the aircraft did infact plummet nose first into the ocean, she would’ve sunk to the bottom INTACT. I’m skeptical about this theory as any aircraft that hits the sea at high speeds without broken water surface tension would disintegrate on impact. The following link explains the theory:
Once again I’m skeptical as any large a/c would disintegrate. It does talk about the path of least resistance and how divers use steep entry paths. But divers do tuck their arms in, unlike an aircraft that has rather large wings with engines attached (almost acts as buckets). But once again check it out yourself. My final opinion is that it is near impossible that a large aircraft travelling an excess of 500Kts would stay intact on impact with the sea.
If it entered the water vertically it would be doing substantially more than 500 knots. I’m skeptical that a passenger airliner (other than Concorde) could manage a nose-down dive without breaking up even before it hit the water, given the speeds it would reach.
That’s not totally true. Just ask Captain Sullenberger about surviving impact with the water. Of course, seaplanes land on water all the time. Getting a plane to the bottom would be easy too. It’s returning it to the surface and taking off again that would be very problematic.
While it is a theory, it’s pretty well developed. You can read the paperwhich was published in the Notices.
Can zombies fly underwater?
I remember watching Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea at my cousin’s house during its initial run. His older brother (studying Oceanography) got seriously upset vat the way the “Flying Sub” mini-drone would dive straight into the water. It could possibly, he said, land on the water and then dive. But it would shatter on impact the way they showed it. (Not to mention the way the impact would shatter the occupants, even if they were strapped in and the FS remained intact).
I had similar thought when I saw the 2004 film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow – all those (apparently) P40E’s splatting into the ocean, without any given harm.
Once I stopped thinking about the structural integrity of the planes (and crew), my thought was that taking the engines from air-cooled heat into cold ocean water probably wasn’t a good idea, either. To be sure, it’s a long way after the shock of impact that you begin worrying about that, but folks arguing for soft lading followed by a dive might want to consider the extreme thermal strain you’re putting on any propulsion mechanism your planes have.
Sully’s plane did not “impact” the water; he landed the plane. Even so, the left engine was ripped loose from the aircraft.
If MH370 had been flown to a controlled landing on the water such that the fuselage was intact, then someone on that plane (even if only the cockpit crew) would have been alive and would have evacuated onto rafts with rescue beacons, and we would have heard their story even though the aircraft itself sank. But we saw none of that.
My wild-assed guess about MH370 is that there was an incident similar to the Australian one, where the pilots’ air canister sprung a leak. (In that case it exited the side of the aircraft under pressure). The canister is cleverly located in the electrical room, so before causing a depressurization hole, perhaps it flooded the radio systems area with oxygen, where a spark would quickly create a helluva fire. Dealing with this, turning off radios and setting an emergency return course, the pilots would not notice until too late they had no oxygen and passed out after setting a course back toward land. It just kept going on that course until the fuel ran out and the engines died. I’m not sure I believe the Indonesians’ claim it maneuvered around the tip of Aceh province.
Given that scenario, what happens when it runs out of fuel? Is there enough electrical control that autopilot maintains straight and level flight as the plane descends? Or would it try to maintain altitude losing speed until it stalled and then plunge into the ocean? If descending level, would it land on the ocean sufficiently level to possibly avoid breakup?
The arguments above miss the point. The defining characteristic of water is that it is incompressible. (Gas is compressible). As a result, as anyone who has bellyflopped in a pool knows, it’s not a lot different than hitting a fairly hard solid. You can land on a solid, even without wheels - it happens quite often. You can also land on a liquid. What you can’t do is hit it head-on (i.e. diving) The problem is that landing on a liquid is like landing on a soft ploughed field; the lower parts that touch first are likely to grab, not skid. This helps rip pieces of the plane and makes the landing rougher.
The reason high-divers and ducks don’t crumble like an airplane when diving is that they are pretty solid and aren’t going that fast. Your head is solid. Hitting the water from 10 feet can hurt (I know) but the water has time to get out of the way and your head is stronger than an empty beer can. Plus, entering with the smallest profile means less water has to get out of the way, unlike a belly flop. Entering the water slows you, but not enough to do damage to your internal structure. Hit the water from the height of the Golden Gate bridge and you may not be as lucky.