I have to second Deep Impact. Someone got me Armageddon one year and I absolutely hated it. It was a disgustingly stupid movie. Then I was given Deep Impact and I actually liked it. As a matter of fact I watched both the other day because I was bored.
It is interesting to read user comments from the IMDB (imdb.com) on these movies. Most of the aviation movies I have seen were made for TV. I don't go to the cinema much.
I might make some people laugh with this comment, but I think the most realistically executed "airline disaster" movie was CBS's depiction of the Aloha flight which suffered an in-flight breakup of the fuselage (Miracle Landing). Although it had its cheesy moments, the dialog and sequence of events were pretty true to life and not dumbed down to make non-aviation people understand everything. As I understand it, CBS spent many months interviewing the passengers, crew, etc. in order to make this movie. I also like how the crew has flashbacks; the Flight Attendant remembering her dad telling her about a Vietnam War rescue mission (she then realizes she needs to start rescuing people), the Captain remembering a flight as an instructor in the military trying to get his student to concentrate on flying the airplane and not on the problem (he then realizes he should focus on flying the airplane), and the First Officer remembering one of her first solo landings in a crosswind in a C150 while she was a student (occurring while they were getting ready to land).
Two other truth-based aviation-disaster movies were about United 232 and the Canadian 767 that ran out of fuel. Both movies were network TV also, and were okay but not great. I don't think the United movie was very well executed, it is not that it had a lot of technical errors (they used actual dialog), but it was just boring the way they wrote it. The 767 movie had a pretty good script but with some technical errors and a few really bad scenes of a model airplane.
There was a half decent movie (fictional) called Blackout Effect from network TV (1998). It centers around an accident that occurs because there is a partial blackout on a center controller's scope, which causes a single data block to disappear from the screen. However everyone (except one investigator) believes that it was the controller's fault. The remainder of the plot turns to cover-ups and conspiracy as the truth is uncovered... faulty maintenance practices, etc.
Two other fictional movies, although less related to aviation but pretty good were from network TV also and called Pandora's Clock and Medusa's Child. Both were based on books by John J. Nance. Actually they were both very good. The former was about a deadly virus accidentally introduced to a 747 and the latter about a woman whose crazed ex-husband gets her to take a large crate onboard a cargo 737 (727 in the book) which turns out to be a nuclear weapon.
Now the ugly. There was some kind of fictional movie on ABC, maybe NBC. I don't remember the names, but the central character had the nickname "Lucky." Anyway, he and his wife are both pilots for the same airline, and they get a flight together. There happens to be a check pilot on this flight, which is aboard a fictional make and model airplane, and the check pilot has a fit because the captain doesn't want to fly the airplane with the computers (total opposite of what would probably happen, I know!!). Anyway, the main thing is something disasterious happened, I think the elevator jammed or something, and they depressurized the plane and filled a wheel well with water to change the CG, or something like that. It was dumb.
Now I have to share with you a movie from USA. Prepare yourselves. It was called On a Wing and a Prayer. Too bad I don't remember more about the movie, but I've blocked most of it from my memory because of how disturbingly stupid, pitiful, and absurd it was. The premise for the movie is a power outage at an ATC facility, occurring because leaky pipes drip water onto the power supplies. The controllers tried to rely on the paper flight strips, but when a controller has a heart attack he scatters them everywhere, with one falling under the baseboard and being lossed. The particular flight is left to fend for itself in a storm. On board the flight, the cockpit resembled nothing of an actual airplane, and both pilots (a man captain and woman first officer... both who they looked like they were taking a break from their minimum wage jobs to shoot this movie) flew the airplane at the same time, both steering the yokes and such, while relaxedly flying through one heck of a thunderstorm. "Don't worry, " says the captain, while lightning flashes through the windows, "it's nothing we can't handle." I believe at one point the wing gets struck by lightning and they lose several feet of it. Then the aircraft flies unknowingly into a holding pattern and risks collision. Meanwhile back on the ground some "dude" and his girlfriend get into a learjet and takeoff while listening to music instead of ATC, almost flying into the path of the troubled aircraft also. Finally, at the end of the move, while landing, the airplane (which was on fire) hydroplanes and performs some wild ground-based aerobatics.
I will have to check out that AOPA article. Barry Schiff is my favorite aviation author.
How can you beat an opening scene where a 152 races a dirt bike, and narrowly wins. We all know the 152 isnt that fast.
I only saw the MST3000 version.
