So, if you’ve read this blog for a while, You’d know that I tend to watch plane crash documentaries, while on a plane. Lately, I’ve gotten a number of questions about that, mainly, why‽

I Like Flying

I like flying. I know for most people, that’s a crazy thing to say. “Who want’s to deal with airports, planes, and worst of all, connections and layovers?” Me, I do.

Ever since I was a kid, I loved getting on a plane. Everything about the experience just peaked my interest, the airport, the plane, and the rare time we had a layover. I just loved it.

This interest slow cooked over many years. By the time I was making enough money to buy plane tickets, I started taking more flights places. Some of them were just a thin excuse to fly.

I won’t deny though, that you really need to bring some entertainment when flying. Podcasts, books, games, videos, something. I tend to bring my steam deck. But my preferred entertainment, is plane crash documentaries.

Planes Rarely Crash

At the time of writing this, there are about 13,000 planes in the air. Of the ones carrying passengers, none are in real danger. There’s a reason that when a plane crashes, it’s headline news. It just doesn’t happen.

When a plane does crash, the crash site is picked over with a fine tooth comb. The plane gets put back together, and studied, by the biggest of turbo nerds. All to figure out, why. Was it pilot error, bad fuel, or a wire that was rubbing on a bolt. All of this information, is used to update policies, and regulations, to make sure that failure doesn’t happen again.

Because of all that, flying is incredibly safe. And any time something does happen, it gets safer.

“Entertainment”

With all that in mind, and having a general idea of how planes work. I have no issue watching crash documentaries on a flight. Now, I’m not a dick about it. I don’t have them full screen on my laptop. While I enjoy them, I fully understand that the person next to me, might not.

What I’ll do, is have the video playing in Quicktime’s mini player. That’ll be in the corner of my screen while I do something else. Typically writing a blog post about the flight or trip.

If this kind of thing gets your attention, then I can highly recommend Green Dot Aviation. This is the channel I mainly watch when flying.

Am I Crazy For This?

Most likely.