We Are Marshall! A Truly Great Movie!

Matthew McConaughey stars in this movie, about the rebuilding of the football program after the 1970 crash that killed over 50 players, plus coaches, and influential alumni and community supporters. Its hard to imagine something like that happening to a struggling college in a poor state. How a community recovers is what the movie is about. Ok, it does drag on, and the football games are not very exciting, but the movie was supposed to be about resilience, hope, the need to continue to live, to try, to make some sense out of a world that is sometimes hostile, sometimes random. I thought it was a great movie, not because of the football scenes, but because of the message of hope, having to keep going forward. I esp liked the ending credits of the movie, showing the actors who played real people, and the pictures of the real people they played, underlining that this was a real story, with real emotions. I thought it was a great film and Matthew Mc did a great job acting as the coach.

I checked the NTSB report of the crash (81pp)the weather for landing was just below minimums. There was some problem with the radio altimeter - it recorded a higher altitude than the barometric altimeter. The Co pilot was calling out altitude, but providing the pilot with erroneous information. A witness said the plane's engines increased, then the plane rolled right and crashed. I think the pilot had visual contact with ground and runway prior to crash, saw he was too low, tried to increase altitude with engines, pulled control stick back to avoid hitting terrain, stalled, rolled right and crashed. Plane was landing essentially into the wind (wind 340 deg active runway 110 degrees). Charter flight had two more stops that night, so it had its fuel tanks full. The reason there was no ILS was because the terrain was too hilly to allow for glidescope. Applications to extend runway and allow ILS were rejected three times due to lack of funding. The pilot probably landed at or below minimums before, he was experienced Southern pilot and there are lots of non precise strips that Southern serviced - and his malfunctioning altimeter told him the airport was above minimums (barely). One of the them was Athens GA - a Southern flight I once took landed in S. Carolina because the weather was below minimums, and we were vanned back to Athens. Weather wasn't going to get better that night, staying the night would have cost $$$, the pilot probably thought weather was a little better than reported (wishful thinking).