I was going to post this in the "Science that makes you cringe" thread but had a change of heart. Anyway, in the best manner of the IMDB goofs (bugger all of 25 people were interested in this), I was listening to a radio play the other day that I'd down loaded a few weeks ago. "Passenger List" by John Scott Dryden. A conspiracy theory type thriller in eight parts, broadcast on Radio 4, first aired in 2021.
A plane goes missing on a transatlantic flight. We learn fairly early on it's a Boeing 737-800 and was purported to have been subject to a bird strike. So far so good. Then I winced, as the Barnacle Geese were said to be at thirty thousand feet. Off to teh intarwebs and get conflicting reports. There is a species of goose that flies over the Himalayas but thirty thousand feet is pushing it.
Then I do some more thinking and digging. A 737-800 won't be flying transatlantic (Heathrow-New York). I even asked a pilot, who said it theoretically could but you wouldn't want to. Something about the comfort of a single aisle cabin over long distances. Listening a bit harder, they claim 256 passengers. Nope. Wiki-inaccurate says 189 if it's single class.
Then we hear a transcript of the pilot talking to Gander radio. She a had a fairly uneventful flight although ran in to some geese 200 miles back so shut down the "second left engine". Not on a 737 she didn't. It's only got two.
Oh, then there was the bit where our hero, who lost her brother on the flight, visits an engine test facility. The kind that drenches a running engine with water to simulate heavy rain and fires birds from a cannon to simulate bird strikes. They fire frozen birds. No.
None of these errors needed to be made. All it takes is a bit of checking. It was still a good story though. As the Boy says "Dad, I suspect you've given this more thought than the writers".
