Does anyone remember this movie? Denzel Washington is the pilot of a plane that crashes while he is high and drunk, but everyone agrees that he did nothing wrong. In fact, his flying was brilliant and the only thing that saved the survivors. It was an undetectable mechanical issue that caused the crash.
A big part of the movie turns on if he admits he was high and drunk, he will be convicted of manslaughter.
This seems totally unrealistic. Obviously, he broke some laws, but they can’t convict him of manslaughter without causation.
Or am I wrong? Are there strict-liability laws for pilots?
If a person drives drunk, can they be convicted of manslaughter if they are involved in a fatal accident that isn’t their fault?
I don’t know about flying or other states, but in my state if you are driving drunk and kill someone, the state must prove a negligent failure on your part to upgrade it to a DUI causing death felony charge. If, say, you are driving drunk, obeying the speed limit, and someone dives out in front of you and the evidence would show that a sober person could not have stopped, then the only thing you are guilty of is simple DUI.
However, going back to the movie, I thought they implied that him exceeding the airspeed on his cowboy takeoff through the storm contributed to the stabilizer jack breaking. I could be wrong, but that was the impression I got.
I have watched the beginning again recently, and I believe he got authorization for the course alterations. And while the co-pilot was nervous about the speed, Denzel said he was right at the limit of authorized speed.
I’ve seen this movie a few times–below the entire movie is spoiled fyi:
it is never clearly established for sure what charges he might face prior to the NTSB hearing (at which he admits, in a sworn testimony, that he was flying while intoxicated), and it is never clarified in the end of the movie as he tells his tale in prison and alludes to how he has a few more years yet to spend there (having already spend a few there, suggesting he got something like a 5 year sentence or so), exactly what crime he was convicted of–the closest it gets is him referencing that in his sentencing the judge said that he had “betrayed a public trust.”
Now, the claim of him facing a life sentence on six counts of manslaughter is made by one of the lackeys of the airline owner in a discussion with his defense attorney and the pilot’s union. I’m actually skeptical of the specific menacing warnings about his fate that were suggested in that meeting by the owner’s lackey actually reflect real law. Even within the movie Denzel’s defense attorney during that discussion seemed to brush aside the possibility.
Later in the movie I do think Denzel’s attorney threatens him with the risk of prison, basically saying “quit acting like an asshole or you’re going to end up in prison.” But the movie doesn’t show his conviction or even him being charged with a crime. The climax of the movie is he has to get through the NTSB hearing without admitting to having been drunk while flying. Pursuant to that, there’s a scene where the woman running the hearing speculates that since several single serve bottles of vodka are gone, and one of the deceased flight attendants had undergone substance abuse treatment multiple times, it was probably her who had pilfered and drank them.
This is portrayed as a watershed moment for Denzel’s character, who simply can’t bring himself to lie and put the blame on the deceased flight attendant (whom he had a casual romantic relationship with, and she had essentially died trying to save one of the passengers), and instead of going with the manufactured story they had planned he admits that he’s an alcoholic and he was drunk during the flight, and in fact was drunk in that present moment at the hearing as well. The NTSB woman looks at him grimly and the scene fades, without it ever showing the subsequent charging/conviction process.
Manslaughter–
“The unlawful killing of another without malice, either express or implied; which may be either voluntarily, upon a sudden heat, or involuntarily, but in the commission of some unlawful act” — Black’s Law Dictionary
I watched the end, and betraying the public trust is all that is directly mentioned. I think he got a five or six year sentence, which seems consistent with manslaughter (served concurrently). Nothing he did seems consistent with a multiple-year sentence.
Doesn’t the pilot turn control over to the copilot and pretty much pass out? He awakens when they are crashing. Had he been awake and doing his job, there might have been a different outcome.
Nah, that had nothing to do with the crash, he turned over controls to the co-pilot after he had leveled off at cruising altitude. The crash was caused by a material defect / maintenance failure in what they call the “elevator jackscrew” in the NTSB hearing at the end of the movie. The basic premise of the film is the plane was doomed due to a mechanical problem and nothing Denzel’s character caused, and in fact his amazing piloting skills saved most of the passengers and crew–except this national hero was also fucking tanked and on cocaine while he did so, raising the core conflict of the movie between his status as a national hero and the fact he was committing the crime of piloting a commercial airline while intoxicated and his own personal addictions.
For what it’s worth I think the situation with the plane is based loosely on the events around Alaska Airlines Flight 261 (all on board died in that flight): Alaska Airlines Flight 261 - Wikipedia
That plane lost pitch control just as the plane in Flight did, in the case of A-261, specifically because of an improperly maintained jackscrew in the horizontal stabilizer. My understanding, and I’m super ignorant on aeronautical stuff, is that the way the movie Flight conflates the terms “elevator” and “horizontal stabilizer” is not actually accurate and these are two different things on a real plane, the movie presents them as being the same thing. The A-261 plane also reportedly was able to sustain inverted, stable flight for a little bit before it crashed into the ocean, which was likely the tidbit about the incident that inspired Hollywood. In the real incident the flight crew was no longer in communication during the final, complete failure of the bolt/nut assembly in the horizontal stabilizer (which sent the plane into a terminal dive), but there were other planes in the area observing and the crew appeared to actually use a roll to put the plane into inverted flight, which actually arrested the dive (as seen in the movie.) But it did so after so much altitude had been lost that the plane still slammed into the water at speeds far too high for survival.
Yes, this is very clear in the movie. Denzel (Whip) did nothing wrong. Not only was it maintenance issue, it was one known to the airline that they ignored, but it wasn’t something a pilot would have known about or could have discovered.
In 2005, Thomas Cloyd was sentenced to five years and his co-pilot (Christopher Hughes) was sentenced to 2.5 years for attempting to fly an America West flight from Miami to Phoenix while intoxicated.
They were charged with operating an aircraft under the influence, in violation of Fla. Stat. 860.13, and operating a vehicle while intoxicated (which apparently includes airplanes), in violation of Fla. Stat. 316.193.
They didn’t even get off the ground. In fact, their primary defense at trial was that they were never even disconnected from the tow truck (it was not successful). They also raised some much more interesting (but still unsuccessful) preemption arguments.
If we’re speculating: I think that Denzel’s character was convicted under state law for something similar (in the prison speech scene, his jumpsuit says “corrections” which suggests state confinement). The behavior in the movie seems at least as bad as Cloyd’s (and, to me, materially worse). If I recall correctly, the movie opens with him in Orlando, so my WAG is that he was convicted under 860.13 following his NTSB confession and sentenced to five or so years.
I guess the problem will actually be whether it is possible to say with certainty that the degree of intoxication did not contribute to the seriousness of the accident? Obviously if you are driving 60mph and someone dives into your path from between two parked cars, nobody could have avoided it. Not all accidents are so clear-cut. There’s the arguments about reaction times, ability to recognize the problem in time or foresee it approaching.
I’m curious to what extent the law allows for considering such factors?
Well, in a criminal case, the burden is on the government to prove the level of intoxication was a substantial cause (proximate cause) of the accident. In my case, a driver (BAC 1.8) hit a pedestrian who was crossing a rural road. We certainly had evidence of perception and reaction time, as well as estimated speed of the pedestrian (we were trying to establish he darted out). It certainly wasn’t a clear cut case, the prosecutor wanted an “exceptional” sentence above the standard range as part of any plea deal due to high BAC and other factors I won’t go into here.
But, to answer your question, all those factors would come into play. There is a lot of science concerning lighting conditions, perception/reaction time, braking distance, trajectory of the body, etc.
I had a whole different take on it. I think the authorities were strongarming him with drunk + deaths = manslaughter. We know LEOs will often make up laws so we civis respect their authoritah or play on civilian ignorance or themselves be ignorant with the law so why not with Denzel? Start off the bad cop so a good cop can come in later and “help him out”.
Well, its not like Denzel was some poor dude off the street that they could sweat down in the interrogation room. He was in a union and had a real heavy hitter for an attorney that got the blood test results suppressed.
I watched part of it again last night. The breakfast scene at the nice hotel. His attorney tells him that the blood test results showed coke in his system and that he had three times the legal amount of alcohol in his system–for driving a car.
He told Denzel that he was in big trouble if the drug test held up and IF (he said if) it could be shown that his intoxication led to the deaths of the six passengers, he was looking at six counts of manslaughter which could put him in prison for life. The attorney made this statement because the investigation wasn’t complete. The airline was saying mechanical malfunction and the manufacturer was saying pilot error.