With helicopters, is normal landing or auto-rotation landing any different when landing on water? I noticed something from investigating my other answer to a not-really-related question.

A wiki article here says:


  The "water bird" emergency landing is a technique developed by the Canadian Forces to safely land the Sikorsky CH-124 Sea King helicopter when one engine fails while flying over water. The emergency landing technique allows the boat-hull equipped aircraft to land on the water in a controlled fashion.[37]


Which leads me to the obvious question: Is landing any different for water landings? If so, how?

I don't know much about helicopters. For a normal landing, I assume they just hover down and I thought the same thing would be done for a water landing. But the wiki article I read implies that something is different.

For auto-rotation without any engine power, apparently there is a flare at the end. Is this flare done any differently when landing on water?

Basically, the spirit of the question is, how is landing different (if at all) on the water, whether powered or not?
As a helicopter pilot, I've never made a water based landing, so I'm not speaking directly from experience, only from my training, but there are a couple things that are missed in the discussion here that I would certainly worry about.

If I had a real engine failure, and was forced to perform an auto-rotation, in all likelihood, I would not end the auto-rotation with zero forward velocity, I would probably perform a running landing (where you slide on your skids). This, of course, is assuming I'm landing on a flat surface where I'm not likely to roll over (such as a street, parking lot, or runway). Holding the flare to bring the helicopter to a complete standstill has a few risks for me, the biggest one being that if I flare and stop my descent while I still have forward velocity, holding the flare will start to increase my altitude again. Higher inertia (heavier) rotors in small helicopters will suffer from this problem, for example, in training, a Robinson R-22 will generally not have this issue, but an R-44 has much heavier rotors, and we get trained to anticipate a flare at the end of the auto-rotation. Depending on the helicopter, weather, and how I've performed my auto-rotation, if I'm in a real emergency, I would rather put the helicopter down on the ground and slide a little bit than suffer a rotor stall at 50 feet, but a running landing is clearly not an option in a water based landing.

Once I've performed an auto, and the helicopter is on the ground, I'd apply the rotor brake to get the rotors to stop moving before I exited the aircraft, and generally speaking, won't have to worry about the rotors any longer at that point.

If I am performing a water based auto-rotation, there is quite a bit more to worry about. The first thing I have to worry about is that I won't be able to perform a running landing. This means that I'll have less margin for error in my auto-rotation. The second problem is that as soon as I set the helicopter down into the water, it's going to start sinking, and I'll still be strapped in. If I jump out, I'll have to worry about hitting the rotors (or the rotors hitting me) as the helicopter sinks. This means that as soon as I hit the water, I have to remain in the aircraft, and I'll pitch the cyclic over in the opposite direction from the side I'm sitting on, so that I can stop the rotors and still exit the aircraft on the surface side rather than underneath the sinking helicopter. This gets more complicated in the case of passengers, I would encourage them to jump out before the helicopter hits the water, but after my flare, so that they can clear the aircraft and I don't have to worry about them. I only mention it as an additional complication I'd potentially have to deal with.

All of this complexity is a large reason why most of the helicopter pilots I know really do not like flying very far over water. When I'm flying over the water, I tend to stick to an area near the coastline specifically for this reason.