Airport 1975

Airport 1975 (1974)

3 corrected entries

(5 votes)

Corrected entry: In the end, Charlton Heston & girlfriend are walking down stairs that a moment ago was an escape slide. They pan out & up, and none of the slides are out & the doors are closed.

Correction: Charleton Heston and Karen Black are exiting the aircraft on the starboard (right) side of the plane. The evacuation was entirely on the left side. On the VHS version, an airport worker comes up a set of stairs to open the 1R exit door. The DVD version does not show the door being opened but does show that stairs have been brought up to it.

Corrected entry: A Boeing 747 is about to (potentially) crash land (at the end of the film). As many emergency vehicles as possible would be on standby, yet all that's present is one ambulance, waiting to rush a child to hospital for a kidney transplant.

Correction: We do see "crash trucks", leaving the fire station, rushing down the runway, and alongside the plane as it comes to a stop.

Corrected entry: Shortly after the plane has landed you notice two oddities: the fire services leave more or less immediately after landing and another plane is taxiing to leave the airport. A major emergency of this nature would probably see the airport closed for a while.

Correction: As this was an accidental collision and the jet had landed safely, the danger is, for the most part, over. The fire crews might be leaving quickly, but the taxiing jet may simply be relocating to another part of the airport, having arrived recently or simply to move away from the damaged jet. Also, a closed airport isn't motionless and deserted. Internal operations like moving planes and equipment would still continue unless an imminent threat were still posed, which is not here.

johnrosa

Factual error: The scene in which the Beechcraft Baron hits the Boeing 747 in flight plumbs new depths in cinematic absurdity. Assuming both aircraft are at their normal cruising speeds - they appear to be - and the Beechcraft has half a fuel load left, it will hit with the same energy as 7,700 kgs of TNT. The Beechcraft Baron weighed 3,200 kg and the two aircraft would have a closing speed of something like 700 kmh. Even a glancing blow would tear the entire front half of the 747 to bits - there would be virtually nothing of the fuselage left intact all the way back to the wings, and the film shows the two aircraft on course for a head on collision.

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Suggested correction: What matters is how much of the small plane's kinetic energy was deposited in the 747's structure. A glancing blow would deliver less energy than a head-on collision, because it lessens the total time interval of the impact. Another important thing is if the small plane shattered or stayed largely in one piece during the collision. If it promptly shredded on impact, then each little fragment carried away its portion of the total energy. Smaller pieces of something as light as that plane would immediately get caught in the powerful airflow and be diverted around the 747.

Absolute rubbish. Airliners do not survive mid air collisions.

More mistakes in Airport 1975

Joe Patroni: Y'know, sometimes the public's right to know gives me a huge pain in the ass.

More quotes from Airport 1975

Question: On approach to the airport, the crippled 747 is shown lining up with the runway. Meanwhile, there are cars going back and forth on a service road right at the end of the runway. Why wouldn't they have momentarily stopped the ground traffic on that road until the plane had made a safe landing?

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