"Plane" - Erm, Yes

[Elvensmith]

Just watched this latest Gerard Butler action movie and despite the efforts of the producers to give some credence with semi authentic flight deck speak, kind of fell flat on its face technically.

 

The aircraft depicted looks like a MD80 or possibly MD82 which has a flight range of just over 2000 NM.

Trailblazer Flight 119 was flying from Singapore to Honolulu via Tokyo.

Distance from Singapore to Tokyo is around 3000 NM.

Distance from Tokyo to Honolulu is around 3800 NM.

 

Even if the the aircraft hadn't flown dead bang through an electrical storm and incurred a highly unlikely complete electrical failure (though the engines were still running), it would have been coming down somewhat short anyway...

 

Good old Hollywood.

[PhrogPhlyer]

Looks to be an MD-80 based upon this production location pic.

[mrzippy]

Still, an entertaining movie!  If you are going to pick it apart, that takes all of the entertainment value out of it! 

[snave]

16 minutes ago, mrzippy said:

Still, an entertaining movie!  If you are going to pick it apart, that takes all of the entertainment value out of it! 

I was appalled, not entertained. S'not even funny!

Someone needs to sack the `technical experts`...

[ftldave]

13 hours ago, snave said:

I was appalled, not entertained. S'not even funny!

Someone needs to sack the `technical experts`...

 

Oh, please. Do like dear old mother-in-law used to say, and repeat: "It's only a movie. It's only a movie." And the honorable Zip is quite right. They're made for entertainment, not accuracy of any believability. Not made for aviation enthusiasts. The only movie I can remember that could be said to have any real technical expertise about flight (space flight, that is) would have been Christopher Nolan's 2014 film Interstellar, how general relativity really would work. But I think even that movie went off the rails in the end, the final scenes.

 

[snave]

11 hours ago, ftldave said:

 

Oh, please. Do like dear old mother-in-law used to say, and repeat: "It's only a movie. It's only a movie." And the honorable Zip is quite right. They're made for entertainment, not accuracy of any believability. Not made for aviation enthusiasts. The only movie I can remember that could be said to have any real technical expertise about flight (space flight, that is) would have been Christopher Nolan's 2014 film Interstellar, how general relativity really would work. But I think even that movie went off the rails in the end, the final scenes.

 

What perturbs me is, I PAID for the movie. And can't get my money back. And watched it until the end - and only then realised how risible it was!

[lnuss]

3 hours ago, snave said:

What perturbs me is, I PAID for the movie. And can't get my money back. And watched it until the end - and only then realised how risible it was!

I suspect your expectations are too high. Movie producers rarely care about reality. Of all the aviation related movies I've seen, the only one that I ever found that tries to be ( and pretty much is) real-world-accurate is the 1970 movie Airport, based on the 1968 book of the same name by Arthur Hailey, starring Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin. It was superb, from the problems getting an airliner unstuck in a snowstorm to ATC communications to airport procedures, etc. I had trouble finding anything to criticize about aviation accuracy. I've seen a handful of others that had some attempt at accuracy with limited success, but by and large they don't even seem to care about using the same aircraft type from one scene to another* or about control movements being proper for the maneuver shown, and they seem to love to characterize a spin (tailspin) as automatically being deadly with a rare (in their books) ability to recover at the last second.

 

One other movie that didn't do too badly was the 1954 movie The High And The Mighty, starring John Wayne, written by Ernest K. Gann, based on his 1953 novel of the same name, and much of it based on his real world experiences he documented in the book Fate Is The Hunter. And finally the 1953 movie Island In The Sky, also starring John Wayne, written by Ernest K. Gann, and based on his 1944 novel of the same name, also from his real world experiences he documented in the book Fate Is The Hunter.

 

These latter two movies were a touch hokey in a few spots, but aviation wise took few liberties.

=============================================================

* I recently watched a Perry Mason rerun about a case related to aviation and they had one aircraft be a C-140 in one scene, a C-170 in another scene and a C-180 in yet another scene. They also had a C-310 on the ground become a Twin Beech (Beech 18) in flight.

[snave]

19 hours ago, lnuss said:

I suspect your expectations are too high. Movie producers rarely care about reality. Of all the aviation related movies I've seen, the only one that I ever found that tries to be ( and pretty much is) real-world-accurate is the 1970 movie Airport, based on the 1968 book of the same name by Arthur Hailey, starring Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin. It was superb, from the problems getting an airliner unstuck in a snowstorm to ATC communications to airport procedures, etc. I had trouble finding anything to criticize about aviation accuracy. I've seen a handful of others that had some attempt at accuracy with limited success, but by and large they don't even seem to care about using the same aircraft type from one scene to another* or about control movements being proper for the maneuver shown, and they seem to love to characterize a spin (tailspin) as automatically being deadly with a rare (in their books) ability to recover at the last second.

 

One other movie that didn't do too badly was the 1954 movie The High And The Mighty, starring John Wayne, written by Ernest K. Gann, based on his 1953 novel of the same name, and much of it based on his real world experiences he documented in the book Fate Is The Hunter. And finally the 1953 movie Island In The Sky, also starring John Wayne, written by Ernest K. Gann, and based on his 1944 novel of the same name, also from his real world experiences he documented in the book Fate Is The Hunter.

 

These latter two movies were a touch hokey in a few spots, but aviation wise took few liberties.

=============================================================

* I recently watched a Perry Mason rerun about a case related to aviation and they had one aircraft be a C-140 in one scene, a C-170 in another scene and a C-180 in yet another scene. They also had a C-310 on the ground become a Twin Beech (Beech 18) in flight.

Yes, I am probably waaaaay too finicky. I come at it from the point of view of what is the point in mimicking if you can't do it right?

I have already forgotten watching the film because the mimicry was woeful. `Just doing it for the money` is my only impression of the actors, after that I plain forgot them, and only recollect wanting my money back.

I recollect watching a WW11 film called `Das Boot` where the cast were denied access to sunlight for 6 weeks, as that was common for seafarers on subs at the time. They all looked pasty-faced by the 8th hour of the movie.. Do these actors want to earn their money? These guys all did.

Same cant be said in this lamentable concoction... `Plain` not `Plane`, AFAIC. One can tell Butler involved himself as producer....

[lnuss]

You're entitled to your opinion -- sorry it makes you so unhappy.