Not all airplanes require a runway for takeoffs and landings; some are designed for use on water. Known as seaplanes, they are commonly used to reach remote locations. Some seaplanes are used for other purposes, such as delivering medical supplies or fighting wildfires. While they can all perform water-based takeoffs and landings, however, there are different types of seaplanes, such as float planes and flying boats.
What Are Float Planes?
Float planes are characterized by the use of pontoon-style floats. They don’t feature traditional landing gear assemblies with wheels. Instead, float planes have floats. Using these floats, they can take off from and land on bodies of water without sinking.
There are single-float float planes and twin-float planes. Single-float float planes have one pontoon-style float directly below the fuselage, whereas twin-float float planes have two floats. Of these two styles, twin-float are the most common. They help to distribute the weight of the aircraft across a larger area while also providing better stability.
What Are Flying Boats?
Flying boats are seaplanes that use their fuselage for buoyancy. The fuselage of a flying boat functions like the hull of a boat. Even when touching the water, the fuselage will keep the flying boat afloat — all without allowing the intrusion of water into the cabin. That’s why they are known as flying boats.
Differences Between Float Planes and Flying Boats
Most seaplanes can be categorized as a float plane or flying boat depending on whether their fuselage touches the water. Float planes have floats that separate the fuselage from the water. Flying boats, on the other hand, do not. Like boats, they have a watertight body that protects them from the intrusion of water.
Float planes are very similar to landplanes. Many, in fact, are conventional landplanes fitted with pontoon-style floats. The float or floats are attached to the underbelly of the landplane’s fuselage. Flying boats are quite different from landplanes. Most flying boats are built from the ground up for use on water; they aren’t simply landplanes that have been converted into seaplanes.
Another key difference between float planes and flying boats is that the latter typically have wingtip stabilizers, whereas the former may or may not have wingtip stabilizers. Since flying boats use their hull for buoyancy, they aren’t as stable as float planes. Wingtip stabilizers provide this much-needed additional stability. Float planes have large pontoon-style floats for stability, so they typically don’t need wingtip stabilizers.