Snakes on a plane

Listening to: You choose top 40 albums you must have. 'Rumours' by Fleetwood Mac is in at 20. They are playing a recent live version of 'Go your own way', which is my second favourite Mac song after 'Dreams'. 'Go' is one of the best driving songs ever. It's just such a good track. And yes, I have a copy of 'Rumours'.

So I wound up at the above on Friday night, despite having a publicly stated non desire to see it. And I enjoyed most of it, which is good. Having an audience willing to shout and clap helped immeasurably.
I don't generally like horror stuff, and found most of the various snake related dispatches disturbing no matter how wildly implausible. I enjoyed what I thought was a knowing effort on the part of the producers to include every disaster/action/horror movie cliche they could think of.
It reminded me of the time D3vo and I went to see 'Last Action Hero', and Rich and I went to see 'Starship Troopers', and how both times we were the only ones in the audience who got the joke.
Since a plane is important to the plot, and some readers will know my tendencies, here are some plane inconsistencies, in a not at all serious way. This probably contains spoilers.

-There is no avionics compartment below the cockpit in a 747 as shown in the movie, as the flight deck is directly above the forward main cabin and there is no room. So all the people getting bit down there couldn't happen.
-If the snakes were released in the cargo hold, which is below the passenger cabin, how do they get into the roofspace above the cabin? Ducting maybe, but for that matter, how do they get into the cabin at all, prior to the dropping from the ceiling stuff?
-How come the snakes use the roofspace to get into every part of the cabin except the forward section?
-The upstairs first class section appears to be too big, but its been a while since I've been in one of those, so I could be wrong.
-The decompression thing probably wouldn't work, but it does look cool.
-The flight simulator teaching you how to fly thing actually has some basis in reality. I know this from personal experience, having several hundred hours on various simulators, and one or two fying an actual aircraft. I have been told by instructors that time on a good PC flight sim does give you more of a clue when it comes to the real thing, and I found that to be true in practice.

The above in no way detracts from my enjoyment of the movie.

Useless 747 trivia
-It is an icon. The term 747 needs no explanation when used in conversation.
-It is aparently possible for a 747 to achieve supersonic speed (which it isn't designed for) in a dive. I'm not sure anyone has actually tried this and survived, but it has been done with its older the Boeing 707. The 747 has the fastest cruising speed of any airliner now that Concorde has been retired. A 747 brought down by a bomb in the 80's reputedly went supersonic as it dived into the ocean.
-A 747 has performed a loop-de-loop (not intentionally) and remained intact. One was caught in extreme turblence over the Indian Ocean. Later analysis of the flight recorder showed that the plane had technically completed a loop. It had a load of passengers aboard, which must have been a hell of a ride. It is theoretically possible to barrel roll a 747 (also done with a 707, also done in a Concorde), but again I'm not sure if anyone has tried it.
-The main cabin of a 747 is longer than the Wright Brothers first flight.
-A 747 briefly became the world's largest glider in 1982, when one flew through a cloud of volcanic ash, which caused all of the engines to stop one by one. Eventually once clear of the cloud the engines were able to be restarted.
-A 747 holds the record for the most passengers ever carried on one aircraft, after one evacuted 674 people from Darwin after Cyclone Tracy in 1974.
-A 747 has recently been trialled as a water bombing aircraft, for the purposes of fighting forest fires. Air Force One is a 747 (actually there are two Air Force One's. They only officially become 'one' when the president is aboard). The 'Doomsday' planes are 747's as well.
-Boeing took possibly the largest commercial risk in manufacturing history when it started developing the 747. If it had been a failure in the marketplace the company would have failed with it. It essentially created its own market.
-It is one of the few aircraft that still makes me stop and stare when I see one in real life. It has spent 30 years as the largest airliner around. Only the new Airbus A380 is bigger.
-Contrary to popular belief, 747's can be flown in and out of Wellington airport safely, and Qantas did just that in the 70's and early 80's. They don't come here for economic reasons, as the length of Wellington's runway limits the maximum weight of the aircraft (heavier planes need longer runways), and thus reduces the amount of weight available for important stuff like fuel or money making passengers and cargo. The 747's that Qantas flew here were special models that weren't as affected by the weight issue. They were replaced by 767's in the 80's, which have since been replaced by smaller 737's, for money reasons rather than performance ones.
-When it comes to the 'Waynes World' thing of sitting on the end of the runway as a plane fills the sky above you, a 747 is pretty hard to beat. Never managed it myself, although I have sat under a few 767's, which are almost as big. Wellington is unique in it's opportunties to fill the sky directly above your head with fast moving metal, with roads close to both ends of the runway.