Flight

[shelbystripes]

I tend to enjoy studying aviation history, specifically accident investigations. It's just a fascinating subject to me, especially when you can watch experience and intuition turn into split-second heroics. After all, the "Miracle on the Hudson" was only a miracle because Sully made a snap decision to attempt a safe water landing, which had never

Comments

[reptyle]

Man, that trailer was almost too intense for me to watch.  Even though the visuals were obviously computer graphics, Alaska 261 made it all too easy to imagine it was real.  I'm not sure rolling the plane would have worked for them though; even assuming the stabilizer would have stayed jammed the direction it was, the airplane started breaking apart in the dive anyway.  But at least they made the decision to keep their flight over water to protect people on the ground. (Incidentally, if you don't already have it I've got a recording of the ATC communications if you're interested.)

I'm not sure what the definition of a "safe" water landing is, but a passenger plane did ditch in the Pacific Ocean back in 1956 without any loss of life (except birds in the cargo hold

[shelbystripes]

I'm not sure it would have worked for them either, but I'm marveling at the kind of person who'd conceive of the idea it might, especially in the middle of it. (I think the key in that situation is knowing doing nothing or the standard thing will get you dead, which makes the insane alternative less insane.)

I'm sure going to see the film. It's by Zemeckis. He's fallen off the radar lately with his focus on horrid motion-capture CGI films, but he's still the same guy that made Forrest Gump, Contact, and Back to the Future. His films are usually amazing and have some form of consistent realism to them. (You wouldn't say the BttF films were "realistic" in that you think they could've happened, but the characters feel so real you buy into them as real.)

That trailer shows the same kind of thing; it's rare these days that I see a unique character and not just "Denzel Washington", but that trailer is full of real characters and I want to see what happens to them.