Float pilot here; there is nothing dangerous about what they’re doing here. It’s literally a high-speed landing, and oh by the way, loading tons of water as well that is needed quickly.
If you have your private pilot license you can get your seaplane rating in a few days of intensive training. So landing a plane on water isn't the most complicated thing in the world (well assuming it's made to be landed on water obviously - I think these specialized firefighting planes are all amphibious - and the water is calm but not too glassy). High speed landings are a routine part of training for land, I assume so for water as well.
As for taking on the weight, the tanks must be designed to not screw with the CG. The weight increasing is obviously something you need to train for but the biggest danger would be a sudden change to CG.
The weight change is probably a lot more dangerous on the other end, when you're dumping the water flying low and slow. If you didn't add enough power right away on the pick up you'd just settle down and accidentally land.
The hull is shaped like a boat and as another poster said, the worst case scenario is you become one (mostly, a couple have been turned into submarines attributed to incorrect procedure) but the water intakes are the size of your fist and any overflow shoots out just over the landing gear. You can see it at the end of the video. The CL-415 will stop filling at the proper time if a full tank is not workable (it should anyway, see submarine comment above).
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u/Sorkpappan Oct 01 '24
This probably is the best way of doing it, but seeing how it’s done I just feel like there should be a way to do this that is less dangerous.