Splashdown!

It was probably as nice a morning as you'll get in mid-June in the Florida Keys: calm, hot, humid, clear. You know your airplane is going to perform like, well, let's call it like a languid dog. But you prepare for that. I had preflighted the Cessna 210 carefully and briefed my passengers thoroughly on the use of our life jackets and raft, because this flight was heading out over a couple of nice big bodies of water on the way to the island of Grand Cayman.

Here's a fact: You don't climb out over land in Key West. The controllers want you to go away once you take off, and there are so many directions you can go, but having land under you while you do it is pretty hard to do. Also, you have to go around the Naval Air Station, so even if you try to stay over the chain of islands, you're inevitably pushed offshore for at least a chunk of time early in your climb.

In my case, I was IFR heading to Grand Cayman, flight-planned pretty much south and a touch east. That's all over water. I was climbing slowly (500 fpm) and just reaching 1,500 AGL with full fuel and five souls onboard---one adult in the front, my two kids in the center and my 15-year-old babysitter in the rear row. I had just been cleared for the left turn to the TADPO intersection when the engine "went off" on me. It gave me no indications prior to that moment that it was going to come out from under me.

I heard the bang---something like a cherry bomb in a toilet---so I stayed in the turn and pushed the nose over (my glider pilot instincts at work, but every pilot out there should know that, in a power failure situation, what you want is nose-down for airspeed, first and foremost). I put my finger back on the push-to-talk and said "Mayday!" to the NAS controller I'd just talked to seconds before to accept the clearance to TADPO. I looked down and saw 0 RPM, then looked up and saw a windmilling prop, and that pretty much answered the question, should I troubleshoot this or focus on the landing? Focus on the landing, definitely.

The Atlantic was flat, almost glassy, and there wasn't a breeze. I could pretty much set up in any direction I wanted to land. But one thing was quickly apparent to me: I wasn't going to make it back to dry land, or even the beach---and it didn't matter there, as the beach was full of people.

I did pull the propeller to coarse pitch for a better glide; in fact, I pulled it so hard that I disconnected the cable completely from the engine, I learned later, when I saw the airplane in the salvage hangar.

ATC asked me what the problem was, and I'm pretty sure I replied, "I've got nothing---no power." He asked for souls onboard, and I quickly uttered, "Five. Full fuel. I'm busy." He cleared me for any airport and any runway. I remember the last thing I said to him: "Unable."

There are basically seven items on the ditching checklist, and I did them all. I gave a few key commands during our short emergency, including telling my right-seat passenger, the only other adult in the airplane, to open her door. (If you open the doors in the Cessna 210 and then lock the handle, the doors won't re-close.) I also told everyone to brace. I kept the gear retracted. It was good to have that option. Ditching in a fixed-gear airplane can make for a much more dramatic arrival.

As it was, our smooth-bellied 210 touched down on the water so sweetly that we skipped like a stone. I held the nose up high and the wings nice and level, and the second time we touched, we dragged the tail feathers, which worked like an arresting hook to stop us. The nose plowed under for a minute---and I got a surprise.

When the airplane hit the water, the fuselage did what it was supposed to do: It bent, which compressed the windscreen in such a manner that it popped out about a 12-inch hole right at its weakest point, where the outside air probe was, and the seawater came gushing in. My first thought: Don't inhale. I reached for the door with my left hand and put my hand first through the open window. I thought for a second about swimming out that way, but then reached again, caught the door just below the window, and it opened easily since the cabin was filling quickly. I went to get out of my seat and had to think about why I couldn't. The seatbelt! I reached down on my right and flipped the buckle, and I immediately floated up, back over the seatback and out of the cabin, surfacing where the wing root and the fuselage met. It was less than 10 seconds, all of it. I looked up over the top of the airplane, and there was my right-seat passenger; she had gotten out through the right-hand door.

I had briefed my babysitter well the night before for a reason. She knew what she needed to do. Looking in the window at her, she was sitting high and dry. I remember her yelling at the kids, in front of her, to get out now, because they were in about waist-deep water by that point. It helped, refocusing them on the reality of the moment (they were just 9 and 10 at the time). They performed as commanded and as they remembered they should.

I can remember my youngest grabbing my ankles from below on her way out of the airplane (because, by then, they actually had to swim out). I can remember compulsively counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and thinking, "Yes! We're all here," over and over as we floated in the water waiting for our pickup. It was a great feeling. The water was warm, everyone was floating, and the kids even were scooting around trying to pick up their playing cards from a game they had started off the water like a surreal aquatic game of 52-card pickup. We laughed. Catharsis. A good thing.

I considered going back in the cabin for the life raft, which was just behind and between the front seats, but I could already see three boats heading at high speed in our direction. I wasn't going to need it. As it was, we were in the water for less than five minutes before being picked up in a skiff by a guy operating a dredge nearby. (He's the one who told me the landing was a nice one.) By then, the airplane had filled up with water and dramatically tipped its tail up, almost as in a salute, and sliced beneath the waves.

Apparently, I landed within 300 yards of the dredging barge. I was told later that it was 30 feet of water, a mile and a half offshore. The EPA wanted the airplane, with 90 gallons of fuel onboard, out of the water. That's pretty much why they were so aggressive about bringing it up. There was a really nice beach very close by.

I didn't stay to see the airplane raised some 36 hours later, though I did see pictures of the process later, and a week later, accompanied by an FAA safety inspector, I did see the airplane, wings hacked off for easy portage, sitting on a trailer bed in the salvage hangar. The damage impressed me. You could see where the airframe bent just behind the doorframes, and how the force of hitting the water bent each blade of my nice Hartzell scimitar prop back 90 degrees. You could see where the windscreen failed; but you could also see the passenger compartment nicely intact. I patted the old girl on the nose and thanked all those engineers and assemblers for a good airframe. I'd been flying that airplane since it came from the factory new. It was a bittersweet farewell.

There are a couple of tips people can take away from all of this. First, anytime your engine quits in takeoff configuration, push! You don't have much time in a nose-up climb configuration before your airspeed will deteriorate to stall speed. Get the nose down and get to best glide speed. Point it where you intend to land and judge your trajectory. Use the right landing checklist. If you're landing on water and you aren't in a seaplane, keep the bottom-side clean for a better touchdown. And keep the nose up on landing, with the wings level. You have a better shot of staying right side up, which makes for a much, much easier egress.

When you have a situation where you have a face full of water, you don't have a lot of time to think. I had only three thoughts: Don't inhale. Door. Seatbelt. Every one of my passengers (and me!) had to stop and think, "Why am I still in my seat?" Oh, right, seatbelt. It slowed us down.

Also, if it isn't attached to you, it's not coming out of the airplane with you. Period. So, if you aren't wearing a PFD inside, you won't have one outside. Now my passengers wear PFDs anytime we're overwater---on takeoff, in flight, on landing. I wear a Farmer John-type that's very comfortable, and I provide my passengers with fanny-pack-style, low-profile PFDs that simply wrap around their waists and hook. I also have them practice pulling the PFD out of the pack and with one hand donning it over their heads. Practice creates muscle memory and makes my passengers confident that they can do it, if need be.

Finally, you need to brief your passengers well. I did. I have them reach from the back seat to open the doors so they're confident. I also tell them how to use the life raft, and even entrust one of them with the responsibility to get the raft out of the airplane. I leave the tags with the instructions (seven steps) on the raft. I point out to my passengers that they don't have to remember anything, just read the instructions and do them. Then I tell them that once everything stops moving, they shouldn't wait for me to tell them to egress. I may not be conscious to tell them what to do.

The odds of having another catastrophic failure are slim, at best. But it did take me a while, and a lot of work, to convince my lower brain, the old part of the brain, where the fight-or-flight reflex originates.

For a while, it would distract me every time I wanted to go fly. I didn't even know what was wrong at first---after all, I'd been flying for more than half my life at that point. It took forcing myself to fly---and a little bit of therapy---to get to the root of things and desensitize the "old brain." I don't blame anyone for the PTSD. It's what has allowed the human species to survive 100,000 years. It just wasn't a healthy emotion for me, so I had to work through it.

Today, I talk to pilots about thinking carefully about whom you seat by an exit. The airlines don't do this just because. You have to have someone capable of opening and operating the exit, and being part of the team that makes for a successful egress. I've had a lot of people talk to me, saying, "My toddler loves to sit in the right seat of my Bonanza," and I ask them, "Are you sure you want a toddler at your key exit?"

I do a safety seminar on briefing your passengers. Most of us fly with the most important people in our lives most of the time. And what are we most afraid of? Hurting them. The best thing we can do is bring them in and make them part of the team that makes any emergency a success.

Amy Laboda has been flying airplanes since she was 15 years old. She has taught flight students from the East Coast to the West, and currently serves as a National FAA FAASTeam member, providing Aviation Safety Seminars for FAA-certified pilots in the U.S. and abroad. She was the Editor in Chief of Aviation for Women magazine for nearly 13 years before returning to her freelance writing and multimedia career.