Airline crashes are rare events in modern times. Great advances have been made in the last 50 years to make commercial aviation virtually accident free. Even more rare is an airline accident occurring at sea. Almost unheard of is planned water landing, or ditching. But for the few passengers who are involved in these incidents, air crash compensation may be required.
In the early days of flight, airline accidents were far more common in relationship to the number of flights. In addition to having a far inferior safety record, the industry was not prepared to deal with certain emergencies. In 1940, a British Handley Page airliner was forced down in the Gulf of Oman. No survivors were found, but even had anyone aboard survived the crash, it’s doubtful whether anyone would have been found alive, for the aeroplane had no emergency life-saving equipment, including life jackets and rafts. In the late 1940′s and early 1950′s, the U.S. airline industry experienced three major crashes at sea that resulted in heavy loss of life. One reason for the casualties in these accidents was that the passengers had not been prepared for the ditching, nor briefed on the use of the emergency equipment that was aboard. For the passengers in these incidents, air crash compensation would have been appropriate. New procedures were subsequently implemented, and because of them, a U.S. airliner was successfully ditched in the Pacific Ocean in 1956 without a single death.
Modern jets have many safety features, and their crews are trained to deal with emergencies. This was illustrated in January 2009 when a US Airways Airbus A320 jetliner was forced down in the Hudson River, in New York City, after a collision with a flock of geese had resulted in the failure of both engines. Using their skills, Captain Chesley Sullenberger and his fellow flight and cabin crewmembers not only carried out a successful water landing, but also safely evacuated their passengers, with the assistance of numerous vessels that had come to assist. Nevertheless, many of the occupants suffered injuries or hypothermia, and these individuals would have needed air crash compensation.