A seaplane is a powered fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing (alighting) on water. Seaplanes are usually divided into two categories based on their technological characteristics: floatplanes and flying boats; the latter are generally far larger and can carry far more. Seaplanes that can also take off and land on airfields are in a subclass called amphibious aircraft, or amphibians. Seaplanes were sometimes called hydroplanes, but currently this term applies instead to motor-powered watercraft that use the technique of hydrodynamic lift to skim the surface of water when running at speed.
A Grumman G-111 Albatross amphibious flying boat landing
OS2U Kingfisher in 1944, seaplanes were commonly used in WW2 to do reconnaissance and do search and rescue. They were launched from ships or seaplane tenders, or could take off from water in the right conditions
de Havilland Otter floatplane
Dornier X a flying boat airliner of the interwar period
In aviation, a water landing is, in the broadest sense, an aircraft landing on a body of water. Seaplanes, such as floatplanes and flying boats, land on water as a normal operation. Ditching is a controlled emergency landing on the water surface in an aircraft not designed for the purpose, a very rare occurrence. Controlled flight into the surface and uncontrolled flight ending in a body of water are generally not considered water landings or ditching.
A Twin Otter float plane completing a water landing
The Apollo 15 capsule descends under two of three parachutes.
US Airways Flight 1549 ditched on the Hudson River in 2009 with all passengers surviving.
Ditching button on the overhead panel of an Airbus A330
