I recently saw two television programs about recent air disasters. The first, which I saw sometime the week before Christmas, was on TLC. It was sort of a sensationalist "gee look at the big explosions" program. It covered certain commercial, airshow and military crashes. I saw a snippet of the program again last weekend, so I suppose it's on the TLC rotation.

I saw a similar (though much better) program on MSNBC on Dec. 24. This was a two hour program, though I saw only the first hour. This program, while it showed plenty of footage of burning wreckage, etc. focused more on post crash investigation and the quite disturbing findings sometimes made during fleet inspections.

The MSNBC program was worth seeing.

I doubt we'll see either of these programs on NBC's inflight service.

Are you talking about that MNBC "special" called something like, "Why Airplanes Crash" or "When Airplanes Crash?" Narrated by Robert Hager? If so, they run that thing every time a major airplane crash occurs. They keep appending the last disaster on to the end.

My (flying) collegues and I refer to that show as "When good airplanes good bad!" It's interesting but very true to NBC's sensationalistic "news" format.

Neo - I noticed the same thing and thought it was my bad memory transposing programs. But you're right! They do run it every time there is a disaster or big flying day or sweeps month and it is the same old, same old. You'd think with all their resources they could do some good instead of rerunning garbage for ratings.

If you want to delve further into this topic, there is a great website with loads of information: http://www.airdisaster.com/

A couple of years ago I was on a plane where they showed a documentary on the Apollo fire in which three astronauts died. (I forget the airline, but given my travel patterns it was most likely DL or AA.) The FA agreed that it was an odd choice of in-flight "entertainment," but said most people didn't see a connection.

You have to see the new movie "Cast Away" with Tom Hanks. My wife and I saw it last night and it was great! Even better is the sensational crash scene. I think it was a DC-8/9/10?

I guess I'm just a bit jaded

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Ken in Sacramento

I've seen the TLC air disaster program. I agree...it was mainly scaremongering. "If you don't think it's dangerous to fly, look at all these big explosions."

I saw Cast Away yesterday as well. I had very low expectations going in (I didn't watch "Survivor"), but I actually enjoyed the film. The crash scene was intense...

There was Fearless that I doubt they showed on board