A seaplane is an airplane designed to take off from and land on water instead of a runway. Instead of wheels, seaplanes have either boat-like hulls built into their bodies or floats (called pontoons) attached where wheels would normally be. These allow the plane to rest on water like a boat and then accelerate across the surface until it lifts into the air.

Seaplanes opened up travel to places where building airports was impossible: remote lakes in Alaska or Canada, coastal villages, island chains, and wilderness areas. Bush pilots still use seaplanes to deliver supplies, transport passengers, and provide emergency services to locations unreachable by road. In places like the Florida Keys or coastal British Columbia, seaplanes operate like water taxis, hopping between islands and coastal towns.

The golden age of seaplanes was the 1930s and 1940s, when massive flying boats carried passengers across oceans before long-range land planes existed. Today, seaplanes are less common for commercial travel but remain essential for reaching remote areas. The word can also be used as a verb: a pilot might seaplane into a mountain lake to drop off campers.