Corrected entry: Right before The Windsor flight crashes, the stewardess tells two passengers that they've made arrangements so they would make their next flight. Obviously this could only be done with communication with the ground. If they had sky phones the tower would have called them to warn what was happening.
Corrected entry: Colonel Stewart and his men arrive at the airport in a helicopter. So, where do they get the Army truck they drive around in?
Correction: Colonel Stewart did not arrive in a helicopter, Major Grant did.
Corrected entry: At the end of the film when the planes begin landing there is no reason for the planes to deploy emergency chutes and send the passengers outside into the snow. All aircraft landed safely without incident. They were simply low on fuel. Planes only evacuate if there is impending danger to passengers by remaining on board.
Correction: There are plenty of reason to do so. (1) The planes were low on fuel and the landing area is a distance from the airport. So they might not have enough fuel to move back to the airport. (2) They are all now in deep snow. The planes might not be able to get out on their own power. (3) It is the middle of the night. The people on board wouldn't want to wait till they can get ladders out there.
Corrected entry: Since the terrorists have implausibly taken over all the radios at the airport, the good guys use the marker beacons to communicate with the airplanes. Even if they could be modified to talk rather than beep, marker beacons (outer, middle and inner) are on the approach path of a runway, and only transmit to an aircraft as it passes overhead. The signal is only picked up by an aircraft's marker beacon receiver, if so equipped. There is not enough time to get a message. Nor could a marker beacon be used to broadcast to a large number of airplanes. The outer marker is only 5 miles from the airport. At most, one airplane would be holding over the outer marker. (01:04:45 - 01:06:10)
Correction: Marker beacons do not transmit on-demand when passed over. They are continuous. You are correct that an aircraft needs to be equipped to hear them, which most airlines were at that time period. You can have multiple aircraft "stacked" at an outer marker, separated 1,000ft vertically. As one shoots the approach, the rest are lowered in queue.
The wording of the original post might need some polishing, but the gist of it is true. While a marker beacon does broadcast constantly (which was demonstrated by the endless looping of Barnes' message), its range is very limited so that the marker is picked up only for the few seconds that an approaching aircraft is flying over it. Otherwise, the point of HAVING marker beacons would be moot... you don't want a pilot thinking they're 5 miles out and close to the glide slope if they are in fact 7 miles out and 5000 feet too high.
Corrected entry: In the fight scene at the luggage machine McClane pulls a golf club from a golf bag. But a golf bag would never be sent as luggage without being wrapped tightly up. Otherwise the clubs could fall out or be damaged on the way. (00:13:55)
Correction: I travel with a guy who does exactly this. He puts the rain hood on and nothing else, and sends it into the hold, so far without damage or incident. Hence it is not beyond the realms of possibility that McClane would find clubs in this state.
Corrected entry: When Esperanza shoots the pilot of his plane the sound of the engine changes its pitch immediately. Why does it do that? It is not as if the pilot's foot slid off the accelerator when he died. (01:10:45)
Correction: When the pilot was shot, he leaned forward on the control column, which would've started the plane into a dive. When Esperanza pulls him off the controls, the sound returns to normal, consistent with the plane leveling off again.
Even so, the plane going into a dive shouldn't cause a change in engine speed (or by extension, tone). Wind noise would change, but what we hear is the engine spooling up to full power. That shouldn't happen.
Corrected entry: In the first shot of McClane on the snowmobile his breath can be seen in the air in front of his face. But he's driving so fast that that would be impossible. (01:30:50)
Correction: It's not shown in front of his face, it's to right of his face, and he goes past it quite quickly. There's nothing impossible about it. I have a snowmobile myself and witness this just about every time I go out on it.
Corrected entry: The interior of the plane which is deliberately crashed by the terrorists is of a BAC 1/11. I do not know any airline in the world which would choose to send a BAC 1/11 over the Atlantic from Europe due to it only being able to carry a limited number of passengers and short range capabilities.
Correction: It would be helpful to know what about the interior gives this plane away as a 1/11, as the exterior is a DC-8. Many early jets have similar or identical seating layouts and cabin appointments. I have not seen anything that obviously distinguishes this plane as a 1/11.
Corrected entry: When McClane says 'damn it, I hate it when I'm right' during the crawl through the ventilation duct, it is clear that this line has been dubbed. (00:44:15)
Correction: This is most likely a network TV alteration, rather than a mistake. Most US networks either edit out or re-dub scenes with expletive language to make them more family-friendly.
Corrected entry: It is not possible that a Heckler & Koch MP5 repeats with blank rounds as seen during the fight at the church. An automatic weapon, such as an MP5, repeats with gas pressure, which only is strong enough when a bullet is in the barrel.
Correction: There are different types of blanks, that do allow for the firearm to operate. The 5-in-1 style of blank, designed to cycle through firearm actions and fit a variety of firearm chambers, is also commonly used in real firearms for dramatic effect.
Corrected entry: When Willis is trapped in the plane by the terrorists he escapes by using the ejector seat - however the plane is a C-132 (at least the body of a C-123, with studio-designed wings) and these planes don't have ejector seats.
Correction: If it has studio designed wings, why can't it have studio designed ejector seats? It's a fictional aircraft, it just looks a bit like a C-123.
Corrected entry: At the beginning of the fight scene on the 747 wing, the door swings opens as if on simple hinges like a screen door. Boeing uses plug doors, a design where the entire door has to move inwards several inches before moving outwards.
Correction: They actually used a real 747 when filming. I doubt they would waste their time to modifey the aircraft door to open incorrectly. It's more likely we don't see the enter door opening procedure and therefore it only looks like they just push the door out. (FYI. all doors on all pressurised aircraft must first open inwards. They are designed this way so cabin pressure will help seat the doors against the door seals and door franme, rather than risk cabin pressure blowing the door off.).
Corrected entry: Someone says the planes only have an hour. They could get to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Hartford, and maybe even Pittsburgh, Buffalo or Toronto - to name a few places.
Correction: One possible explanation for the fact that nothing got rerouted is because of the two storms. One storm already knocked out at least one airport, it is possible that between the two storms the other airports were shut down or at least operating at reduced capacity.
Corrected entry: When the terrorists are about to take off, McClane, before falling off the wing, releases a fuel valve, yet Stuart does not notice. However, the General flying the plane does not notice either. Since the stream of fuel is considerably strong, wouldn't there be a warning indicator in the cockpit?
Correction: Not necessarily. It's not reasonable to assume that there would be sensors throughout the entire fuel system to detect leaks. Fuel levels are monitored by the guages, which would obviously indicate higher than normal fuel flow. However, when you consider how many thousands of gallons of fuel a 747 carries, an awful lot of fuel would have to leak out before the loss would be noticeable. For reference, an Air Transat Airbus developed a fuel leak at cruising altitude due to an improperly installed engine part (24 August 2001), but the crew was only alerted to the problem when the engines began to fail due to fuel starvation.
Corrected entry: Throughout the film the exceptionally poor visibility is repeatedly refered to. In the scene where McClane is trying to prevent the aircraft crashing by waving flaming torches in the air the Controller can recognise him from the Control Tower through a small set of binoculars despite the facts that 1) it is dark, 2) it is snowing, 3) they have only met once before and 4) McClane is wearing a borrowed Airport coat. Even from the end of the runway where McClane is standing at its closest point to the Tower this would be impossible.
Correction: Ok. The make-shift torches light up John as he is waving the torches about. You can see two small "lights" from the tower point of view. The guy uses a pair of binoculars to look at these small lights and makes it out to be John. There is poor visibility for planes to see the runways if they try to land. This is becuase the planes are a few thousand feet up in the air and it would be impossible for them to line up their approaches let alone land on a runway. At the end of the movie we see how is it possible to land the planes, they just needed a guide to where the runways were.
Corrected entry: When John, the airport police captain and his brother are in the car about to go to the hanger the car pulls out and hits the cab there is an external shot of the crash you see that the wind screen shatters but when the camera goes to the bonnet the wind screen is still intact.
Correction: It's not the windscreen shattering, it's snow from the roof of the car being shot forward onto the bonnet due to the crash impact.
Corrected entry: Bruce calls his wife and finds out that she should be landing soon. We then see the journalist from the first film making a huge fuss about being moved from first class, where he has been sitting for the entire journey. He hadn't been in Holly's compartment before due to his reaction when he first sees her. Why did they only just move him when the plane was about to land? He was sitting in first class the whole journey with no problem. Surely ten more minutes wouldn't hurt?
Correction: Holly IS in the first class, the left and the right rows have only 2 passanger seats, the middle one has 3. When the journalist goes to his assistant in the other compartment to ask him about the radio, it is clear that the side rows there have 3 seats and the middle one has 4.
Correction: Actually I believe that the section that Holly is in is business class, which can be similarly equipped, seat wise, to first class. Thornburg was moved from first class to this section.
Corrected entry: John Amos plays an Army Major, and says that he taught William Sadler's Colonel Stuart "everything he knows." Well, this doesn't make any sense, especially if they are both from Special Forces units. Unless Stuart went through SF selection late in his career, he would not be getting instructed by someone two grades below him.
Correction: Colonel Stuart doesn't have to go through SF selection later in his career, he simply could have been promoted later on. Instructors don't advance in ranks very fast.
Corrected entry: The noise of the big English aircraft exploding should be heard far from the point of its explosion. But why didn't the waiting passengers in the hall hear it and panic? If it was too far, how McClane can arrive to Esperanza's aeroplane so quickly?
Correction: First, airport buildings are made extra soundproof. Besides, if the wind blows away from the airport and is strong (there is a snowstorm)it is possible to overhear the explosion. The people in the hall whould have felt the vibrations though.
Corrected entry: When fighting on the wing, Bruce Willis is pushed near the opening of the jet engine that is running - there is an eight foot radius around the front of those engines that would have sucked both of them in. (I used to work on 747's, I ain't kidding about that radius).
Correction: That radius does not exist when the engines are at idle or at taxi speed. And it was so, since Esperonza pushes the throttles up later, after the aeleron has been retracted.
Correction: This isn't a mistake, this is ordinary customer service. She is assuming her company would arrange travel for the inconvenienced passengers because airlines typically do. She doesn't know anything about the terrorists, Barnes hasn't yet been able to contact the flight crews to tell them what's really going on.
BaconIsMyBFF
Disagree, she'd say "we will have." or similar. Any customer-facing staff would know not to promise something they cannot guarantee. She would assure them that arrangements should have been taken care of and she'd update them as soon as she knew more. Also, why was she only now, after all this time, reassuring them. If she truly believed the company would have already taken care of arrangements, she'd have told them this a long time ago.