This paper describes the air compressibility effect in the CFD simulation of water impact load prediction. In order to consider the air compressibility effect, two sets of governing equations are employed, namely the incompressible Navier-stokes equations and compressible Navier-Stokes equations that describe general compressible gas flow. In order to describe violent motion of free surface, volume-of-fluid method is utilized. The role of air compressibility is presented by the comparative study of water impact load obtained from two different air models, i.e. the compressible and incompressible air. For both cases, water is considered as incompressible media. Compressible air model shows oscillatory behavior of pressure on the solid surface that may attribute to the air-cushion effect. Incompressible air model showed no such oscillatory behavior in the pressure history. This study also showed that the CFD simulation can capture the formation of air pockets enclosed by water and solid surface, which may be the location where the air compressibility effect is dominant.