Pilot Report/Testimonials (Anonymous)
The incident occurred in glassy water conditions and in light winds. I was training a student for glassy water landings. After doing one successful glassy water (mostly demonstration), we did a go round for a second one for the student to give it a try.
The aircraft nose was pulled too high on the latter part of the descent and the aircraft stalled about 10 feet above the surface of the water, where there was not sufficient time to regain airspeed. As it stalled, the aircraft turned left and dropped, left float first, onto the water. The hit was quite hard, as the plane was in a nose down attitude at that point. The left float absorbed most of the impact, collapsing the support gear but mostly protecting the plane. One of the longitudinal aluminum tubes in the float was bent, but none of the bladders broke. I am pretty sure that the float itself did not even go underwater!
I believe that the floats largely protected the aircraft and absorbed a huge amount of the force. I have a feeling that this incident would have been an accident with any other float gear.
The incident occurred in glassy water conditions and in light winds. I was training a student for glassy water landings. After doing one successful glassy water (mostly demonstration), we did a go round for a second one for the student to give it a try.
The aircraft nose was pulled too high on the latter part of the descent and the aircraft stalled about 10 feet above the surface of the water, where there was not sufficient time to regain airspeed. As it stalled, the aircraft turned left and dropped, left float first, onto the water. The hit was quite hard, as the plane was in a nose down attitude at that point. The left float absorbed most of the impact, collapsing the support gear but mostly protecting the plane. One of the longitudinal aluminum tubes in the float was bent, but none of the bladders broke. I am pretty sure that the float itself did not even go underwater!
I believe that the floats largely protected the aircraft and absorbed a huge amount of the force. I have a feeling that this incident would have been an accident with any other float gear.
