Deliberate mistake: The angle of the footage of the Air Force jet (from inside the 747's passengers' viewpoint) observing the 747's damage shows the Air Force jet would be flying away from the 747 instead of flying exactly parallel as the outside footage shows.
Airport 1975 (1974)
1 deliberate mistake - chronological order
Directed by: Jack Smight
Starring: Charlton Heston, George Kennedy, Karen Black, Efrem Zimbalist Jr.
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.
Gloria Swanson: Oh. My jewel case. It's bomb proofed, the insurance people insisted upon it. Oh. My idea of heaven is never to have to pack or unpack. Why didn't I think of that before. Here. Here. You know what? The hell with the jewelry let's put my book in here. Thank you. Here you are my darlings, it's all yours - I never wanted to have the damn thing published when I was alive anyway.
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?
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
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.