Originally Posted by conspiratemus1

I could be wrong but I think they were actually able to fly it. There was very little damage, the greatest being to both engines from the geese that had met their demise in them. The hull/fuselage wasn't breached and the wings stayed on. Large aircraft rarely survive ditching attempts. In every previous attempt to land a civil airliner on water, either the tail breaks off or one wingtip hits rough water first and the plane does a cartwheel, with loss of all souls as the plane disintegrates or the fuel ignites.. (Unlike the Air Canada pilot who landed a 767 with empty tanks on an abandoned airstrip, Sulberger had fuel on board and no time to dump it. The Right Stuff I guess.)

But back to the topic, maybe the inflated evacuation slides contributed to buoyancy. .