dive slow, shatter into the sun

Propaganda for Concorde:

@flavinbagel (who also provided the delightful meme above): "What? It can't be!! But yes, your fave (and mine) is problematic, bestie. It's hard to ignore the elegance, the feat of ingenuity and human accomplishment, and the sheer engineering excellence of the fastest airliner to operate in commercial service. It's all too easy, then, to ignore that there were reasons why the Concorde was more commercially viable as a Lego set than as an aircraft. For one thing, it was loud when it was slow, and it was even louder when it was fast, and while being on the thing was grand, being below it (as most of us were) sucked major droop snoot. It also used 3 times more fuel per passenger than a 747 making the same transatlantic trek, while spewing soot and CO2 directly into the ozone layer. This was known for decades, but what has changed in view of more modern light is probably the prestige aspect of the supersonic airliner; flying Concorde meant being part of an elite club that proved you were in the big boy's club, where the wealthy and powerful shake hands with fistfuls of cash and a knowing nod. Hard now to believe we once viewed that with anything less than dreaded disgust, and the Concorde's legacy has soured with that shift. "It let you go to more meetings in one day!" so what? Meetings suck! Perhaps then, like the Saturn V or the Big Boy locomotive, the Concorde deserves to remain a revered marvel of engineering history, but history nonetheless."

Propaganda for the DC-10:

@airbus-a380-800: "we all know about the two accidents that were caused by a poorly designed cargo door and the disaster where the engine fell off (!!) but i think other people rarely appreciate the fact that the one and only fatal concorde accident was CAUSED BY A DC-10. a piece of a dc-10 fell off on the runway and got run over by the concorde. there's not many planes that have the distinction of bringing down OTHER AIRPLANES with their structural problems"

@hesitant-airplane (abridged by me lol, thank you for the rant): "the doors weren't properly closed in two separate accidents. no one was able to see that because the latching system was in no way indicating if the door was closed properly or not. both accidents happened in the 70s. that latching system had to break in TWO DIFFERENT FLIGHTS before they did anything to stop this from happening. the company claimed to have "fixed" the issue, until TWO years later a worse accident happens with another DC-10 and everyone dies. and the cause is, again, the door hadn't closed properly. I mean, what the hell? they had fixed it? why would it happen again? ah, of course, safety is overlooked when there's profit...

I am not a fan of the tail engine. I know it's not the only aircraft with three engines, and with an engine on the tail, but I just hate this. both aesthetically and also because when the two accidents i mentioned earlier in the post happened, it immediately became unusable. and it broke in other accidents too. for example united airlines flight 232 happened because that one ugly engine suffered a failure. because of it the plane couldn't be controlled. why would anyone build a plane where if one engine has a failure the whole plane has to go with it?"

@milfmaekar: "in the late 70s my dad witnessed graffiti in a public bathroom which read "fly McDonnell Douglas, while stocks last" and everyone called it the DC Deathtrap. I don't think it gets much worse than that"

Anonymous: "does this really need an explanation? it's the dc-10."