I watched this on Saturday night: I obviousky need counselling. I hadn’t seen it since release, when I thought it was okay.
When I watched it this time, I realised what a piece of crap it was. Condescending, trite, contrived,- the list goes on.
I was extremely disappointed to see people like Myrna Loy and Gloria Swanson there, but thats another take.
Question, and I hope a few folk here with aviation background can help.
When a Jumbo (from the 70’s) is on auto pilot, could a helicopter fly fast enough to allow a person to slide down a hawser into the cockpit. That is, overtake the aircraft and then hover above it.
Finally- a Jumbo with 129 people? Well over 400 today.
The whole helicopter thing MIGHT be possible if they got the 747 going as slow as possible (by dropping some flaps and slowing to approach speed) and they had a fairly fast helicopter. It would be much more practical to use an aircraft that could open up in back (like a C-130 or C-141) and let the hero go down the ramp and then onto the 747.
The hardest thing about any of this (and one that would make it nearly impossible to pull off) is that you (in the rescue aircraft, whatever type it ends up being) are essentially flying formation with an aircraft that is behind you. Yes it’s on autopilot, but it still gets bounced around. Getting that close to another aircraft at that speed is very difficult and requires constant small adjustments - we did it when aerial refueling but the tanker (the lead aircraft) was usually on autopilot while the receiver was being hand-flown. You simply could not fly any sort of tight formation while on autopilot or without seeing the other aircraft.
I saw this film when I was a kid. I thought it was great. (Must’ve been. It had airplanes in it! ) One thing I noticed even then was that the GA aircraft that hit the 747 had a different N-number than the one the pilot was using. Should’ve filmed that bit after securing the airplane! :smack:
Of course now that I’m older I see that Airport 1975 is an utter load of crap. I’ve never been able to bring myself to watch Airport '77 or Airport '79.
I do like Airport, and I have it on DVD. Rather quaint nowadays, but still a decent film. The High And The Mighty came last week. I’d never noticed that The Little Rascals ‘Alfalfa’ was in it.
The helicopter was stripped down of any excess weight like the rear ramp. It was flown at its max speed to keep up with the 747. The aux fuel tanks in real life don’t say rescue. the are plain. This heilcopter was very well maintained and its rotors were “dialed” in . Tracking. The tail number of the helicopter is 66-14431 you can see the 14431 when they show the nose of it. How do I know this you ask ? I was the crew chief of it.
And with Karen Black at the controls - who had to be taught by ATC that you move the steering-wheel thingy to the left to turn left, etc.
Nice touch casting Dana Andrews as the Baron pilot, giving him one last aviation-movie role. Pity that Jimmy Stewart’s was in Airport '77, and he didn’t even fly. And two years after that, George Kennedy’s character, Joe Patroni, suddenly became a captain instead of a mechanic.
By the way, I don’t think it was that uncommon in the '70s for jumbo jets to fly with 100 and some-odd passengers instead of a number closer to capacity. In America, at least, several of the major airlines bought too many jumbos in the hopes they would be more popular than they turned out to be, which given fuel costs caused financial problems for some of these airlines in that decade. (You don’t see “Trans-Global” anymore, do you?). Booking procedures are a lot more efficient these days as well.
