If the aircraft is partly submerged, you may have to wait for the cabin/cockpit to fill partially with water to allow the pressure to equalize before you are able to open the doors. For many, the most difficult part of surviving a ditching accident is an underwater egress.
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A Boeing 747-200 would not sink if the main cabin was intact. The main cabin would provide about 1,300,000 pounds of buoyancy against a maximum gross weight of about 800,000 pounds. Further, the plane would be equipped with life rafts for the crew to deploy.
Aircraft are simply not designed to withstand the sudden forces introduced upon impact with water, no matter the angle. If an aircraft were to hit the water at high speed, the relatively flimsy structures of the aircraft would shatter, disintegrate, and completely lose structural integrity.
When flying over land, of course it is more likely that there will be more airfields closer to the aircraft at any given time. However, because of lessons learned from its history and the improvements in aircraft and engine reliability, crossing the oceans is deemed as safe as flying over land.
You may think the life vest under your airplane seat will save your life if the aircraft ends up in the water. In fact, such a thing has never happened in modern commercial airline flying.
Passenger planes' black boxes are able to send signals under the sea for 90 days. The black boxes, weighing an average of 5 kilos, activated as soon as they interact with the water and start sending signals. So any team looking for the location of a plane crash can even find it under the sea.
On many aircraft types, pilots can open the side windows in the cockpit. The main reason for this is not for ventilation or vision; it is related to aircraft safety law.
WBZ-TV did some digging and found it is actually impossible to open an emergency exit door mid-flight because of physics. Common passenger doors are about six feet tall and 3.5 feet wide. That means to open the door at 36,000 feet, you would need to overcome more than 24,000 pounds of pressure.
Yet such disappearances are not that uncommon: according to records assembled by the Aviation Safety Network, 100 aircraft have gone missing in flight and never been recovered since 1948.
Some aircraft damage from lightning strikes includes broken lighting and windows, deformed antenna placements, and onboard electronics malfunctions. Other abnormalities or warnings on the flight deck, such as cabin air pressurization problems or false alarms, can occur after your airplane has been struck by lightning.