Last night we watched Airport 77, which to my surprise I had never seen before, given the fact that I was always attracted to airline disaster movies. I must have missed it because I was finishing up my sophomore year of college at the time and must have had other concerns.
Anyway, in this film the terrorists incapacitate everyone with a sleep inducing gas, then fly the aircraft into the ocean somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle. (Remember the Bermuda Triangle?).
The plane starts to sink immediately on contact, and within a few minutes is resting on the bottom, which in this case for some reason is no farther down that it would be at the end of a long pier. As the film progresses, the plane gradually springs more and more leaks, with more and more water trickling in from the top, like a reverse Titanic.
My question is: I can see why a plane would sink on impact if the hull were catastrophically compromised or if the plane broke in two, but would that be possible if the plane were basically intact with just some small leaks? After all, the entire aircraft is designed to be bouyant, so to speak.
Bonus question: Airplane cabins are designed to keep the pressure in, but in the film the urgent necessity is to keep the pressure out. In the movie, despite the growing number of leaks, the fusilage mostly stays intact. IRL, would a plane sunk in fifty feet of water stay mostly intact for two or three hours? Or would all the windows be popped in within a few minutes?
Yeah, it’s a bit of one, though I never watched that particular Airport sequel.
In real life, if you recall the Miracle on the Hudson, the doors were popped, water got in the plane, and it still never fully submerged.
The wings played a major part in that. If the wings had snapped off during the crash landing, that could have been much worse. But unless there was major structural damage like that, the movie played it fast and loose - the plane should have stayed afloat for at least several minutes.
That whole thing is stupid beyond belief. The least-stupid thing in that movie is 10 times stupider than the stupidest thing in the original Airport for instance.
A big airplane is nowhere near water tight. Or air tight. Even if undamaged, water would pour in the various openings and cause it to fill with water & sink in a hour or two tops. Of course opening doors to let people out on the water surface would only hasten the filling & sinking.
Separately, the fuselage is designed to support high pressure inside and low pressure outside. It would be crushed like a grape in 50 feet of water if somehow it was magically air/water-tight. There are spring-loaded hatches on the sides of the airplane that will push inwards and equalize pressure (and let water in) the moment even a tiny amount of lower pressure inside vs. outside is detected.
I just got a bit way in before I got bored…maybe I’ll finish it tonight. To answer you hypothetical, you need to remember this was a ‘special’ plane with a special built purpose, so as such, it leads to easy gymnastics in design to fill the plot holes (i.e. is was loaded with more weight than a normal plane; its cargo holds flooded easily to take it done…whatever)
I was just thrilled to see the late 70’s laser disc scene. I didn’t think those came out for another decade later.
It was the first movie that I ever went to with my first real girlfriend. The movie was so boring that the only thing I remember about it was the makeout session afterward. Thanks for that memory at least.
Does that trend continue; is Airport '79 ten times stupider that Airport '77? If I remember correctly, it takes place on the Concorde, and Joe Patroni (George Kennedy) is the pilot instead of a maintenance guy.
A 747-8 is about 76 m long and the main part of the fuselage is 6.5 m in diameter. If we model that as a cylinder (which isn’t too accurate, but the various bulgings and narrowings should roughly average out), we get a total volume of 2500 m^3.
That compares to a max takeoff weight of 450 tons. And water is 1 t/m^3. The only way it’ll sink is if everyone has already drowned.
i remember this was an Airwolf plot except the hijackers somehow escaped the plane and were holding the location for Ransom and the plane had leaks but one of the stewardesses was walking around with some sort of tape and putting it over the leaks…
I don’t know if I saw any of the sequels to the original. Now I have to at least speed through them. George Kennedy had some sort of amazing inherent ability to enhance the stupidity of movies.
I also saw only the original as a first run movie. In a drive-in theater with my folks to boot. ISTR SoCal was one of the last bastions of significant numbers of drive-ins.
I never saw any of the others except as TV commercials, so I can’t grade the relative stupidity of the whole franchise. But I will point out that “jumped the shark” was coined to describe the natural story-telling arc of any long-enough running Hollywood franchise.
Welcome to Hollywood, where cars explode on impact and people hit on the head are unconscious for convenient length of time with no ill after-effects.
There’s video of a hijacked airliner that ran out of fuel ditching off the beach (in the Comoros? Seychelles?). The Micracle on the Hudson was that the plane stayed intact - it sank mainly (and quickly) because the plane was sitting tail-low and someone opened the rear door- otherwise it might have taken a lot longer. The one in the Comoros snagged a wing and spun, the fuselage breaking into multiple sections.
Water is serious stuff, as any hurricane will demonstrate. A 747 landing is at least 150mph, and I don’t imagin any parts of an aircraft are design to handle what is effectively a 150mph collision with solid walls of water. LSL can probably better answer this, but I doubt wings fall off because the continuous wing spar is probably the strongest part of the aircraft structure.
I last saw this movie in theatre, and the thing that struck me was that even the technical people had given up by the end. The aircraft surfacing (spoiler!?) is obviously a model in a tank using a matte overlay to superimpose it on the ships-at-sea live action. The cinematigrpahy team could not even be bothered to better colour match the water colour of the tank with the model in it to the surrounding ocean, something that should have been fairly easy in processing.
(IIRC, the 79 Concorde movie shows the luggage “leaking” out of the aircraft hold at supersonic speeds without tearing the fuselage. You know how airlines lose your luggage? It’s strewn across the Alps.)
While unrealistic, this isn’t an example of a plot hole. A plot hole is when you have some sort of narrative inconsistency. If a second plane were to land in the water and float, that would be a plot hole as the narrative already established that planes sink. This is an unrealistic premise, but it’s not a plot hole.
And it still never hit the bottom of the Hudson. It was 20-30 minutes before all the passengers were rescued and beyond that, there was enough time (a couple hours) to tow it to shore, despite being mostly submerged by that point.
I first saw Airport when I was a kid. I’ve liked it ever since. I don’t remember anything egregiously stupid in it. Sure, there are nits to pick; but can you remind me what was ‘stupid’?
I don’t recall that the original Airport was particularly stupid within the bounds of normal overblown drama shows. My point was how over-the-top Airport 77 was, not that the original was especially stupid.
