I have been binging on Air Disasters on the Smithosonian Channel. The show is also known as Mayday.1 As should be obvious from the name of the show, it is mostly about disasters involving airplanes. It’s like a true disaster or true crime show mixed with detective and scientific work.
My favorite episodes are those where the problem is no one’s fault, but everyone survives despite them having no right to given the situation, thanks to the overflowing competence of the crew. The most frustrating ones are those where painstaking work has been done to exclude certain hypotheses and support others, but a significant amount of people still insist on their pet theories.
There are a few tidbits of aviation knowledge that are now engrained in me.
In a stall, do not pull up.
Flight attendants are not menial servants. In an emergency, they are going to save your life.
If you need to evacuate, don’t try to take along your luggage and kill everyone behind you.
These words from the introduction sequence have also made a lasting impression:
Brace for impact!
“Mayday” is the original incarnation, but I first started watching it with its incarnation as “Air Disasters”.↩︎