Basic Premise SPOILERS

I agree. Those DC3s were pretty tough - some still fly now I think.

I guess they wanted to have a dramatic angle to the story-having the DC 3 just taking off with everybody just would not have cut it-but yes, DC 3s could take more payload than they were ever designed-there's a story of one DC 3 evacuating three times its passenger capacity from China in WWII-this one of course had two engines, but really, just seven or eight people for all that plane! Even the cobbled-up plane of the original Flight of the Phoenix did better than that!

...and, it looked like one of those ethnic jokes (One American, one British, one Pole, one Jew, one Cuban, one Puertorican were in a plane crash...and you get the various reasons why each of them should survive, and the wiliest does so...)

...and, it looked like one of those ethnic jokes (One American, one British, one Pole, one Jew, one Cuban, one Puertorican were in a plane crash...and you get the various reasons why each of them should survive, and the wiliest does so...)

I guess they wanted to have a dramatic angle to the story-having the DC 3 just taking off with everybody just would not have cut it-but yes, DC 3s could take more payload than they were ever designed-there's a story of one DC 3 evacuating three times its passenger capacity from China in WWII-this one of course had two engines, but really, just seven or eight people for all that plane! Even the cobbled-up plane of the original Flight of the Phoenix did better than that!