Flight of the Phoenix

Corrected entry: The crew crashes into the Gobi Desert, which is in Northern China. Yet the people are speaking Cantonese, which is the local dialect for Southern China (Quangzhou/Hong Kong area), instead of Mandarin (the official language) or any of the Northern dialects.

Correction: What people? They're in the middle of an empty desert. If you're talking about the nomads: well... they're nomads. That means they're from all over. They could speak any language, Chinese or not. Just because they currently live in the Gobi doesn't mean they're originally "from that area."

Phixius ★

Corrected entry: After the lightning hit the plane, A.J. comes running to see if the captain and Elliot are okay. When he is under the wing, he touches it. But after lightning has hit this wing, he never could have touched it, his fingers would have melted.

Correction: Like all metal framed aircraft the C119 is designed to survive lightning strikes by conducting the electricity through the main spar and out of the wingtips. Not being earthed, a lightning strike on an aircraft is nothing serious and this film hugely exaggerates the damage for dramatic effect. There might be a flicker of the instruments and a pretty impressive bang, but the temperature of the aluminium skin would definitely not increase.

One of the biggest misconceptions about electricity melting metal is that metal has to earthed for electricity to melt it. This is simply not true. Electricity can, and does melt unearthed metal.

First, metal doesn't have to be earthed, or grounded for electricity to melt it. That's just a common belief. Electricity can and does melt unearthed, and ungrounded metal objects. Second, the metal aircrafts are made of don't offer complete protection against lightning even though it's built to survive lightning strikes. They are built to survive lightning strikes by conducting electricity through the main spar, and their wingtips but their metal frame is not perfect.

Actually lightning can heat up metal objects whether their earthed or not contrary to the common belief that they have to be earthed for lightning to heat them up. Also while metal framed aircraft are designed to survive lightning strikes their not perfected. Lightning can and does damage or destroy them.

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Mistakes

Character mistake: It's all very heroic and manly but the effort put into dragging the Phoenix into its takeoff position once the engine is started is totally wasted. Townes and A.J. are both experienced pilots and Elliott is supposedly a genius aeronautical engineer - they must surely be aware that the engine power required to taxi an aircraft is trivial compared to that required to lift it into the air. Even taking into account the drag of the skids and wheels, if that engine cannot propel the aircraft at a few kilometers an hour on the ground it cannot propel it to take off speed, nor keep it up once airborne. They are not there to steer the aircraft - they are taking the strain of the whole weight of the air-frame, dragging it into place, and the energy input of eight exhausted, underfed people would add nothing to the contribution of a 2500 bhp aircraft engine in moving the Phoenix. They are not trying conserve fuel - they had enough fuel for an extended flight with both engines at full throttle, so they have easily enough to run one engine throttled back to reduce stress on the air-frame, which they say they are going to do.

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Quotes

Sammi: I thought you weren't religious, Rady?
Rady: Spirituality is not religion. Religion divides people. Belief in something unites them.

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Questions

Question: How realistic is Elliot's plan of building a new plane?

Answer: A flying version of the design about 1/2 scale was built and flown for the original 1965 film. It appears in several flying scenes in that movie, but tragically crashed during filming, killing stunt pilot Paul Mantz.

Answer: Completely realistic. As explained correctly in the film, the aerodynamic principles involved are valid. Given that the constructed aircraft would have oversized wing surface area and an excess of power available, it should fly. Disruption of the airflow over the top of the wing due to the passengers would be minimal. In the 1930's airshows featured multiple wing walkers atop much smaller and lower powered aircraft.

Answer: Stupidly unrealistic. The plane simply wouldn't fly with people hanging off its wings for a start.

stiiggy

There's a big difference between a single wing walker on a high lift biplane compared to 10 people hanging off the wings.

stiiggy

Search on "multiple wing walkers" and see a 160 hp biplane carrying 5 walkers. So, for the C-119 there is about 2894 square feet of wing area, call it 2000 after cut down. The PW R-4360 produces 3500 hp, but let's use only 30% of that to protect the cobbled airframe. 10 guys on the wings are going to disrupt airflow over about 12 square feet each leaving about 1880 square feet of unobstructed wing being driven by 1000 hp. 30 people on the wings would not stop it from flying.

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