Water Ditching Survival Training - Planning
As mentioned in a previous post, to make a transatlantic flight you need to be prepared for the, hopefully, unlikely water ditching. I spent some time the past couple weeks looking into the gear and training I would need.
For training I found a very timely AOPA article titled Ditching, Ditching! Prepping for a Water Landing. It appears in their News & Video section with a September 1, 2017 date by Thomas A. Horne. I got some valuable information from the article, especially the name of a highly regarded survival training company.
The company is Survival Systems, Inc. located in Groton Connecticut. They run several training programs throughout the year. The one I'm planning to take is their ASET1 training. It's a 1 day, 8 hour training program that teaches you the fundamentals on how to survive an aviation water ditching. The most appealing part of their training is that, the second half of the day, you are actually in their egress training simulator, in a pool of water. It has an over-head crane that splashes you, sitting in sort of a cockpit module, into the water pool. Your job is to safely egress the submerged "cockpit" and get to the surface. They train you for both an upright ditching, and a flipped ditching. Have a look at the featured video on their website - kinda cool.
I found another video that was produced by a couple of participant reporters of the Survival Systems training, that actually shows many of the key details of the training. This is definitely worth a look!
For all my over-water flying, of which there is about 15 total hours (each way), I will be wearing a survival suit much like the following.
I found a Seattle company called Marine Safety Services, Inc. that will rent me an Imperial suit to take back to Groton for my survival training. They said I could pick it up early, because I want to actually put it on and go flying with an instructor so that I can experience exactly what it's like to fly a plane in a suit like this. It seems like it would be difficult to control a plane wearing the suit, especially the booties, but every pilot crossing the Atlantic must wear something like this. I suspect you leave the hood, gloves and booties off until you know you're ditching, and then put them on. At the 6000' to 9000' I'll be flying, I'll have about 10 minutes between realization of a ditching and actually being in the water. Of course, the first 5 minutes of that time will be consumed with screaming, after which I should be able to get the gear fully on before hitting the water.
The survival training folks said I could bring my immersion suit and that they'd be sure to include a simulator run or two with me wearing it.
One thing I can't really train for is getting the 75 pounds of raft and survival gear (radios, strobes, EPIRB, food, water...) out of the submerged plane, getting it inflated and up-right. It will be in the seat next to me, and will be buoyant. It will also be tethered to the plane, with a rope long enough that I can pull it out the left door with me and push it out away from me and then pull the inflator cord. I did find a useful YouTube video that shows how to upright a raft, and climb into it.
I plan to take pictures and videos of all this, and will post them when I have them.
For training I found a very timely AOPA article titled Ditching, Ditching! Prepping for a Water Landing. It appears in their News & Video section with a September 1, 2017 date by Thomas A. Horne. I got some valuable information from the article, especially the name of a highly regarded survival training company.
The company is Survival Systems, Inc. located in Groton Connecticut. They run several training programs throughout the year. The one I'm planning to take is their ASET1 training. It's a 1 day, 8 hour training program that teaches you the fundamentals on how to survive an aviation water ditching. The most appealing part of their training is that, the second half of the day, you are actually in their egress training simulator, in a pool of water. It has an over-head crane that splashes you, sitting in sort of a cockpit module, into the water pool. Your job is to safely egress the submerged "cockpit" and get to the surface. They train you for both an upright ditching, and a flipped ditching. Have a look at the featured video on their website - kinda cool.I found another video that was produced by a couple of participant reporters of the Survival Systems training, that actually shows many of the key details of the training. This is definitely worth a look!
For all my over-water flying, of which there is about 15 total hours (each way), I will be wearing a survival suit much like the following.
The survival training folks said I could bring my immersion suit and that they'd be sure to include a simulator run or two with me wearing it.
One thing I can't really train for is getting the 75 pounds of raft and survival gear (radios, strobes, EPIRB, food, water...) out of the submerged plane, getting it inflated and up-right. It will be in the seat next to me, and will be buoyant. It will also be tethered to the plane, with a rope long enough that I can pull it out the left door with me and push it out away from me and then pull the inflator cord. I did find a useful YouTube video that shows how to upright a raft, and climb into it. I plan to take pictures and videos of all this, and will post them when I have them.
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