Are airliners' pilots trained to safely ditch an aircraft?
This is a very dated answer now, but for what it's worth, prior to my retirement in 1999 from a U.S. airline, we did ditching scenarios in 747-100/200 sims during initial training and then occasionally during recurrent training. Proper execution included being on-speed for your weight, nose attitude at touchdown (5 degrees up as I remember), aircraft configuration (gear up but I don't remember the flap setting), determination of wave direction if possible, and landing parallel to the wave action. It was a relatively easy scenario for the pilots but a busy scenario for the flight engineer. He had to position valves properly at the right time, including making sure the pressurization outflow valves were closed to prevent fuselage flooding.