whats your favorite airplane movie

Not a favorite, but an obscure one, maybe someone else remembers it...

There was a movie, came out in the early '80s in theatres (at least out west) called 'Solo', about this mormon housewife that decides to learn/finish learning how to fly and takes a Traumahawk on her long X/C and goes down in the woods somewhere around Monticello Utah. She spends a couple of days living in the crash site until someone (a county mounty or something) finds her.

I remember a scene that was supposed to be the Civil Air Patrol flying search grids and some other plane almost mid-airing.

It didn't portray GA very well and I remember it pissed my old man off the way they portrayed it...
 
Oh damnit, I forgot Air America! I own the dang thing.


I love when Mel Gibson and the other dude are doing the coloring books in the back, while Robert Downy is flying the Maule for the first time in IMC
 
FlyingNole said:
Oh damnit, I forgot Air America! I own the dang thing.


I love when Mel Gibson and the other dude are doing the coloring books in the back, while Robert Downy is flying the Maule for the first time in IMC
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Pilatus Porter, I believe
 
What Airport movie was that when *I think* there was a bomb on board and the pilots had to bring the Western airlines L1011 back to the airport. I always liked that movie growing up.
 
Not necessarily a repost but close enough:
War Movies
Strategic Air Command
The Right Stuff
Flying Misfits (Baa Baa Black Sheep tv movie)
The Aviator
Pearl Harbor
Bat 21
16 Right

p.s. thread like this suck because I now have 4 of these movies in my dvd player. Watching Memphis Belle at the moment
 
FlyingNole said:
Someone say helicopter???

.............AIRWOLF!

Not a movie, but damn good ;)
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Technically it started out as a movie...a TV movie:

AIRWOLF, which debuted as a heavily promoted CBS movie of the week in January 1984 (and continued as a weekly series until July 1986); was well written, produced (CBS kicked in a great deal of money for its production) and acted. It was a thinking person's action (and espionage) show, that truely emphasized personal relationships over technical gimickery. Every week Stringfellow Hawk and Dominic Santini (J.M. Vincent and Ernest Borgnine) fetched the ultra high tech AIRWOLF helicopter from its lair in the California desert to do the bidding of Archangel (Alex Cord) of the CIA to do one thing or another, though not usually until the last third of the episode which gave time to build a story amongst the players. The stories mostly centered around SoCal, but occasionally AIRWOLF took a trip overseas (curteousy of USAF tanker support) to fight a cold war type battle. Like most show's, the best episodes were in the first two seasons. However, by season three AIRWOLF started to look tired. By that time Jan Micael Vincent's alcholism problems caused serious production delays (in several 3rd season episodes Vincent is noticably intoxicated), such that CBS ultimately canceled the show; though not with out giving Vincent ample attempts to straighten himself out. The show still had legs, and was taken over by the USA Network (shot in Canada on a much tighter budget) for a fourth season with a new cast (Barry Van Dyke stepped in as Hawk's long lost older brother St John Hawk) to carry on the CIA's "chores". For the USA show's; cold war espionage was the theme of most of the stories as oposed to the CBS show's getting involved more in current events and family interests of Hawk's and Santini's. I liked the show alot, and was fortunate to have recorded many when USA rebroadcast them. It is of interest to note that Jan Michael Vincent went from a per episode salary of $250,000 (for the 58 CBS episodes 1984-1986) to now (2002) near poverty, and is living in a minimum security re-hab type jail, due to several arrests for public intoxication.
 
You know thinking about it I dont have a favorite airplane movie... Actually the ones i've rented or saw I could care less for...... So the default would be Topgun but that just seems like the obvious.....
 
The best flying in a movie has got to be the awesome flying scenes in 'Fandango', an old Kevin Costner flick.

Bloody hilarious.
 
ERfly said:
No one has mentioned The Pilot, starring Cliff Robertson. I believe it came out in 83. Great air-to-air shots of the DC-8. Great low level flying over The Grand Canyon. Very accurate. Cliff Robertson is a pilot himself. He even got rated in the -8 and did most of his own flying in the movie. Check it out i you can find it.
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That was a good one. Waldo Pepper, Always, Strategic Air Command are some other great choices. All the Ernest Gann adaptations except (sadly) Fate is the Hunter.
And of course, Fandango, a nostalgic romp for anyone that ever jumped with a bunch of stoners in the 70s.

One that has been missed is Cliffhanger. The in flight transfer of a person from a DC-9 to a Jetstar is one of the greatest stunts ever attempted. I say attempted because they actually got the stuntman inside the Jetstar before he was jerked back outside by the cable. He then released, slid along the top of the Jetstar and fell off the back, parachuting into the Rocky Mountains over which they were shooting the event.

There will never be a stunt that great done again, at least for a movie. From here on out it will be effects (ala Air Force One). So that movie deserves a special place in aviation lore.
 
FlyingNole said:
Amen.....I love when the dude lands on the highway and asks for directions.
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That's the best. I love when the guys on the ground are trying to spell out a message, and they move the letters around and the pilot (who's smoking a joint) looks at the moving words, looks at the joint, shudders and tosses the joint out the window. Sooo funny, I wish I could rememeber who the stunt pilot was who did those scenes.
 
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