Notice anything?
That’s right – nobody is wearing a lifejacket.
I’ve always been amused at the traditional picture of a plane floating gently in the water on the safety briefing cards.
Now that we finally have one after billions of flights we can see that the safety policies based on flying 50 years ago are completely useless today.
The pilot landed safely, which is astounding, but more importantly the passengers had no time, nor need, to don the lifejackets.
If all big planes abandoned the extra weight of the lifejackets under every seat then the amount of dollars and CO2 emissions saved each year will be substantial.
I hope the FAA in particular takes this accident into account and really has a good hard look at the existing safety policies.
Lance Wiggs 
Apparently this is the first successful “spash landing” of a commerical jet liner so I guess this supports you theory that life jackets aren’t needed (on basis they are so rare and even if it happens, a life jacket is not needed).
However, you would have to admit that landing in the middle of NY is quite unique. If the splash landing happened anywhere other than in that stretch of the Hudson, (ie.Auckland or Wellington harbour, middle of the pacific), the amount of boating response would have been no where near as quick.
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At least some passengers wore them – see picture #4 on the site you link to, http://www.stuff.co.nz/images/786178.jpg.
Had they rescuers taken longer to get to them, while the plane was slowing filling up & sinking, more might have slipped off the icy wings (the one passenger I read about was fished from the waters quite quickly), and would have been glad to wear them since it extends their time to rescue.
As the other commenter pointed out, not every water landing is so lucky.
I prefer to have that small bundle under my seat, even just for placebo reasons. There must be other ways to save weight on planes…
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