Core77

As you strap yourself into the airplane seat and the flight attendant runs through the safety demo, you can't help but wonder: do those inflatable slides-cum-lifeboats that "deploy in case of a water landing" actually work?

While we've never heard of a plane making a water landing and survivors floating around in those things, it turns out the inflatable pontoons in the skids of helicopters do in fact work. On Saturday a chopper went down in Manhattan's Hudson River, but after impact the pilot inflated the pontoons, preventing the craft from sinking like a stone. No one was hurt.

via newyorktimes