As many of us prepare for holiday season travel, armed with headphones and Xanax, it’s incredible to realize that we can now watch TV on an airplane. On a recent JetBlue flight from JFK to SFO, I realized how modern marvels can be far from marvelous. The airline was broadcasting a show called Why Planes Crash.


JetBlue might want to rethink its in-flight entertainment. The only thing worse than a single episode of the Weather Channels plane-crashing series at 40,000 feet is a whole marathon of Why Planes Crash episodes. This marathon greeted me on my six hour flight home this weekend, and after tweeting a photo my screen, the pilot announced that we were heading into some rough air and turned on the fasten seatbelt sign.


Imagining the irony of that moment convinced me that we were going down. My palms began to sweat, and then, the touchscreen failed under my clammy fingers. I was unable to change the channel away from dramatic, computer-generated reenactments of plane infernos.

If JetBlue is trying to keep people calm, the airline might want to consider avoiding certain programming—specifically, shows with names like Why Planes Crash. Surely, I’m not the only one who doubled her Xanax dose while watching this Weather Channel special and roaring through the heavens in a metal tube at 500 miles per hour. But next time I might just read a book.