747 DC-10

I’ve had an unexpected interest lately. In evenings and/or weekends, I have been watching episodes of Mayday Air Disasters which are available as videos on Youtube. I am watching one now.

They are episodes of 50 minute programs each dedicated to reenacting a plane crash that has actually happened somewhere in the world, along with the actual research to determine why it happened.

I haven’t developed some morbid obsession with death. I prefer the situations where the planes land with no deaths or injuries. I was wondering why the videos were so interesting to the point I wanted to watch them so often lately.

As I was watching one involving a Boeing DC-10, a phrase entered my mind “747 DC-10.”

I laughed.

I Googled when the DC-10 was rolled out for the first time, and it was in 1970. My family was just moving to Elizabeth, Colorado that year and remained there for several years following. During our time in Elizabeth my dad who was an electrical engineer had an assignment to go to Seattle, Washington to work at Boeing for six months and the entire family packed up and went. I was around eight years old.

I remember my father teaching my brother, sister and me about the aircraft. When we saw a plane in the sky or on the ground, he would ask what is that? We got to the point we could determine 727, 737, 747 and DC-10s. DC-10s were much larger and a different shape. The other earlier planes were more similar to each other except for size and harder to determine.

We talked about them so much that for years whenever I came across the number 747 my mind would add ‘DC-10.’ I could see a DC-10 in the sky and my mind would think ‘747 DC-10.’ If I was doing a math problem with the number 747, my mind would chant, ‘747 DC-10.’

Fast forward to today. I am living with my parents and my father is 89. As is expected, he thinks differently now than he did earlier in his life. No conversations about electronics, planes, NASA rocket ships.

Something about watching these Mayday videos resembles being with my father earlier in our lives. Spending time with the precise-minded air traffic controllers, and profoundly intelligent aeronautics investigators scratches an itch for that kind of communication again.

In addition, I love the work I have been doing (Certified Nursing Assistant) but it is very different than the work I used to do that was more intellectually demanding. I have a hunger to keep learning.

Also, I miss knowing what is going on in the world. I sense there is more important and relevant news happening I am not hearing as I feel led like a cat following a laser pointer dot to the same few stories on every network over and over. I did not vote for the current administration, so even when I am hearing the actual news, fact based and true I find it exhausting.

I was hungry to watch something that didn’t try to sway me, or sell to me, and was non-political and based on facts. If a plane is flying in the sky safely that is a fact. If it crashes, there are specific things that cause it which then must be determined. It isn’t about opinion, or political view points, it is about engines, or flaps and slats, or a non-working pitot tube, or sensors that malfunctioned, or a collision or some other thing that must be found.

Intelligent people work together to figure out the facts so that future planes don’t crash for the same reason. Then that process is intelligently and clearly communicated to the public via this show. For me lately, it has been 50 minutes of what is very real and fact based, and that is paradise even though the topic of a plane crash is sad.

Although I haven’t and don’t plan to start using AI, I created an image for this blog as pictured above. I laughed again, and the image became a symbol of what I miss from earlier times vs. what I experience now: fact-based living and news of yesterday, vs. scrambled ‘reality’ of modern communication methods of today.

As weird as my obsession to watch Mayday Air Disasters seemed at first, I guess upon further consideration, it makes perfect sense. It is one of Heather’s temporary psychological coping mechanisms. In addition, I am learning a lot about planes and the entire aeronautical industry.

Thank God for psychological coping mechanisms and continued life-long learning.

Thank God for the many people in many industries who humbly, and intelligently apply their talents in ways that help others and over time, create a better and safer world.