What posters here seem not to be considering....

Any passenger aircraft in commercial service faced with a "Mid-ocean" ditching is likely to have serious mechanical problems likely make the aircraft at best only semi-controllable and certain to make an approach and "touch down" in in a classic wings level, nose up, into the wind/sea almost impossible.

The vague concept that water is "soft" seems to pervade the views of most folks. It's not, and at the minimum flying speeds possible in today's a/c or even more likely at the speed of a barely controllable a/c essentially "unable to fly" are going to bring about a "crash" scenario likely to severely damage/destroy an a/c's fuselage, certainly breaking it apart in two or more sections.

Mid ocean landing? Without many hours notice and extremely good luck, no rescue assets are going to reach the scene of the ditching. Even a ditching in San Francisco Bay of a large a/c with many souls on board is going to have a long period before any rescue craft arrive and the number of survivors is going to be small.

The old pictures of PanAm's Clipper ditching under near perfect sea conditions in close proximity to potential rescuers in no way present the likely fate of an a/c ditching today. No pilot with whom I've ever spoken would not make every available attempt to find some sort of runway (or even a seemingly level beach) for an attempted landing rather than attempt a ditching.

Reality strikes. Most of the gear is for "Show", much like an infant's security blanket, designed to at least convince pax that steps have been taken to improve survival odds. What pax don't realize is that the odds for survival have only been improved from "Little or no chance" to "Well, maybe somebody will be alive in a raft when the rescuers finally get there".