The movie Air Force One came out in 1997.
It's a film where terrorists take over
the US president's Boeing 747.
Today, I'm going to do a Hollywood vs. reality
on the film Air Force One.
Get off my plane!
Coming up!
Hey, 74 crew! Welcome back!
If you don't know me, my name is Kelsey.
I'm a 747 pilot.
My channel, 74 gear, is all about aviation.
Today, I'm here in Anchorage, Alaska.
As you can see, the backdrop of this video is actually really nice.
Now, I want to be clear.
I've never been on Air Force One
so there's a few assumptions that I'm going to have to make
on a couple of topics.
One thing you should know is the Boeing 747 that the president currently flies on
is referred to as a "Classic".
It's an older generation, an older model than what you see me flying.
That means it requires three people on the flight deck.
You have a captain, a copilot or first officer and an engineer.
So the first scene you're gonna see three people up there
and that third person is actually required to be there
on the flight deck to fly that aircraft.
The first thing I have, the terrorists are actually already on board Air Force One
and are in the process of trying to take over the aircraft.
Let's get into it!
Code red! We have a code red! I repeat.
Shots fire on board.
Code red acknowledged.
Bridges, lock that door now.
Flight control, this is Air Force One declaring emergency.
Get down!
Ramstein Tower, this is Air Force One.
We are Code red. Shots fire on board.
Request emergency assistance. ETA 15 minutes.
Air Force One, landing runway 09.
I repeat runway 09.
Roger. Turning to heading 1-8-5. Descending to 5,000 feet.
This is Halo Flight Lead.
You are under escort. All airspace has been cleared.
Alert force has been mobilized.
Ramstein tower, we are at ten mile dogleg. Final coming in red hot.
Roger, Air Force One. Wind is 0-niner-0 at 1-2. You are clear to land.
In this first scene, the main thing that is off is how the pilots
and Air traffic control are communicating.
Even in an emergency,
Air traffic control is going to be giving the pilots a heading and a direction
and an altitude.
The pilots generally aren't going to be dictating
I'm turning this heading and I'm going to this altitude.
That's generally not what's gonna happen.
Another thing the pilot says is that it's on a 10-mile dogleg.
Ramstein tower, we are at ten mile dogleg. Final coming in red hot.
A dogleg means you're coming in at a 45 degree angle to the angle of the runway.
In most cases, we intercept on a 90 degree angle
That's called a base leg.
Or we're on a very long final
which means we're just coming in straight to the runway.
So a dogleg means you're coming in at a 45 degree angle.
Another thing that he says is they're coming in red hot.
I started laughing because no pilot would ever say that.
And if someone said that, all the other people would be making fun of him.
All right! Let's get back to the movie.
Watch out!
Open the door!
No matter what happens, we land this aircraft. Is that understood?
Come on.
Come on. Flaps 30. - Flaps 30.
Let me pause it here real quick because he says he's gonna land Flaps 30.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
We land either flaps 25 or 30
but you're not gonna have someone select flaps 30 this close to the runway.
Usually, you're gonna land flaps 30 if you're very heavy
or you're on a short runway and you need to come on slower.
You would land flaps 25 probably in this scenario because you're trying to land
and get on the ground as quickly as possible.
So selecting flaps 30 this close to the runway is not very realistic.
Also, I mentioned earlier, Air Force One is a Boeing 747
which is a classic.
That classic addition means that the gauges,
the instruments that the pilots looking at, are round steam gauges.
They're not the glass cockpit which is the computer screens that you're seeing here.
Now, it's possible they've upgraded the avionics
or upgraded the instrumentation in the Boeing 747
but an original classic that you generally hear people refer to
doesn't have this layout of a cockpit.
And like I said, I've never been on Air Force One
but if there's someone out there that's watching that can get me a tour...
Message me.
All right! Let's get back to the movie.
No! Get the fuck in the air!
Now! Take this plane up!
Up! Up! Get this plane back in the air now
or you die.
Get up now!
Now right before he shoots the first officer,
the first officer reaches over and grabs a lever and pulls it down.
That lever, if it's armed which it usually is be right before landing,
it automatically deploys.
So there's no reason that the first officer would need to pull that.
Usually that someone's going to be armed
and as soon as the wheels touch down,
that speed brake is going to come back.
That's gonna help push the aircraft on the ground.
That's gonna help reduce lift on the wings.
That's gonna help the brakes.
There's a bunch of different things that it does.
If someone actually forgot to do it
which I guess is possible in this emergency situation,
it's natural that the pilots are gonna look for that to come back.
Which means, in this case, the captain would reach over
and pull that speed lever back.
So it wouldn't be up.
Also realize that the Boeing 747 has auto brakes.
That means as soon as those wheels touch down and speed up,
the brakes start working and slowing the aircraft down.
The pilots aren't manually doing it.
So you see the brakes skidding and things like that,
the brakes won't do that.
They'll actually release and make sure that they have traction.
Another thing that's very Hollywood in this scene is
you see the pilot actually slump over
and then the plane veers to the right.
This isn't a car.
It's not like a normal steering wheel that
if something lets go it's gonna shoot one way or the other.
The way that aircraft is maneuvered is
either using your feet on the rudder pedals
and using rudder steering like that or a tiller.
This is a picture of the tiller on a 747.
It takes a little bit of force to move this
so a guy's slumping over in a seat isn't gonna be close enough to reach that tiller
and there's not going to be enough force to push it.
Also, I hopefully don't need to tell you that a 747 can't turn at this speed
or generally turning around seven to ten knots when we're making a turn.
It's not a Fast and Furious car which you can drift around a corner.
Sorry Vin!
All right! Let's get back to the movie.
Ah! Jesus!
First, I'm not sure why everyone at Hollywood likes to think
that the leading edge of an aircraft wing is sharp like razor sharp
with hedge trimmers on the front.
Every time you see a plane wing go through a bush or a tree in a movie,
it just slices everything off.
Here's a picture that I actually pulled from my Instagram
that shows the leading edge of a wing from a 747.
As you can see, it's a rounded front.
There's no hedges or razor-sharp anything on the front of this wing.
So it would not work
going through there, it would not just slice off a bunch of branches.
And when he finally turns to actually take the aircraft off,
there's several really Hollywood things that are going on here.
First and I couldn't quite make it out but it doesn't look like he has any flaps out.
When you take off a 747, normally you're taking off with flaps 10 or flaps 20
and that allows the aircraft to take off at a slower speed.
That's the reason we use it for landing as well.
So we can land at a slower speed.
So it's the same for takeoff.
You're gonna have those flaps out so you can get the aircraft up in the air.
And he's also taking off in a very short distance
which means without any flaps, there's no way he's gonna get off the ground
in a couple thousand feet like you're seeing here.
And the last thing and I can't stress this enough is
no matter what type of constipated face that you make
your aircraft isn't gonna perform any better or
do anything that it's not normally going to be able to do.
So if we're ever flying together and I look over
and you're making a face like this,
please don't do that.
Alright! Let's get back to the movie.
In this scene, Harrison Ford is actually taking over the plane
and actually going to be flying the aircraft.
I don't suppose you know how to fly.
No, sir.
Come along. I'll need a copilot.
Yes, sir.
Anybody there?
Yes, we're here, sir.
All right. You got somebody that can help me fly this?
Sir, this is Colonel Jackson.
Bob.
We need to get you out of hostile territory.
Good idea, Bob.
I need you to look above the central video screen.
There's a series of L.E.D. numbers.
Now, one of them should read 1-1-0.
Got it.
That's your course heading.
Just below, there's a knob surrounded by hash marks.
I want you to turn that knob counterclockwise to 290.
290.
We're turning, Bob.
Good. This will take you out of Kazakhstan.
We're gonna be okay, baby.
Now, sir. We can't land this plane on autopilot
so we're gonna need to go over a few things.
Now, this in kind of surprised me
because Harrison Ford in real life is actually a pilot.
Yet, he's talking without holding any buttons down.
Now you can make a phone call and talk to someone through the flight deck,
that can happen
but usually when you're talking you're transmitting,
you're holding a button down.
And his hands are moving around, he's not holding a button down
so as a pilot, you would think that that's something he would have done.
If everything that we said on the flight deck
was getting transmitted to other aircraft
or Air traffic control or passengers in the back,
most pilots by now would probably be fired.
And as a side note, it's kind of funny
they said they wanted to get out of Kazakhstan.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I actually had a layover in Kazakhstan.
Here you can see as a picture I took on the ramp with a 747 right behind me
and behind it are the mountains of Kazakhstan.
I just took it off my Instagram.
Anyway, let's get back to the movie.
These MiGs, how far away are they?
Never mind.
That one coming. Countermeasures are activated.
Left turn.
We're hit!
Christ. We're on fire.
We've got an engine on fire.
Number four engine is on fire.
Pull the fire handle overhead. - Okay, I got it.
I got it.
We're rolling right.
Left rudder. You have to compensate.
Do I pull back on number one engine?
Negative. You'll slow down. You have to trim it out.
How do I do that?
Knob. Aft pedestal. Jesus Christ!
We got a red light here.
Looks like we're losing fuel.
So we'll just have to ignore the fact that all these fighter jets are not able
to shoot down a 747 despite the fact that
there are no other guns or weapons or missiles for the 747 to shoot back
at these other fighter jets which are significantly faster.
Now one thing that was very good is that when the engine was on fire,
the copilot, in this scenario, reached up and pulled the lever and turned it.
That is what you would do in the real event of an engine fire.
So that was correct.
Harrison also asked him if he could pull back engine number one.
Now, we don't know what altitude or what speed they're at
but that would be another way to balance the aircraft out.
But he tells him to use the trim
where he tells them to get the trim rudder is actually in the right spot.
It's on that Aft pedestal.
Kind of to the right of where he is.
And again, I don't know what altitude or what speed he's at
but he could have pulled back lever one.
Because obviously these fighter jets can't shoot
and they'll probably run out of bullets and have to go back and get gas.
Okay! Let's get back to the movie.
Air Force One, this is Liberty 2-4.
Approaching on your left side. Do you read?
Air Force One. Loud and clear.
Gibbs, they're here.
Get the door.
We'll need 10,000 feet and 200 knots.
Okay. We've got to get her slowed down.
Air Force One and Liberty 2-4, this is AWACS Blue Star.
We have you in radar contact.
Okay, I just have to pause this real quick.
Obviously, most of you know that aircraft like a 747 are pressurized.
And when it's pressurized, it's not like you can just open the door latch
and then punch it and it will fly out.
The little door that you see him actually open up
it's just the panel to arm the emergency slide.
It's not like you can lift that panel up and then just punch that yellow knob
and the door's gonna go flying off.
All that you would do is punch it and probably you hurt your hand.
Besides that, if they were able to punch and kick that door out,
that door, which is very big and heavy,
is either gonna fly into the wing and damage it
or possibly into the engine.
There's a bunch of things that could go really wrong with kicking that door open.
A better idea would have been using the hatch that's on the flight deck.
It's a small hatch that opens inward.
That inward hatch would then be inside the aircraft
and not flying into the wings or engines.
That would obviously make the flight deck very loud and very windy
but since these guys have already avoided a hostage takeover from terrorists,
missiles, fighter jets that couldn't shoot them down,
you know, a little bit of noise from the flight deck
isn't gonna really ruin their day.
Okay! Let's get back to the movie.
We lost another engine.
Liberty, we lost another engine.
Liberty 2-4. Acknowledged.
Sir, time to go.
Who's gonna fly the plane?
I'll take care of that, sir.
Got it.
We've lost another engine.
We're passing 3,000 feet.
Impact in less than two minutes.
Get the president out of there!
When you see engine one flame out, the screen they show there is accurate.
That's what it looks like on a 400 which is what I fly
but you see the engine for shutdown
and then you see some instrumentation around engine four.
That is not actually how it looked like.
It would look like this if the engine was shut down.
Next when you see the military guy arrive on the aircraft,
Harrison Ford is getting out and he's squeezing around the outside of the seat.
There's not a lot of space over there.
This is a photo of what it looks like from behind the captain's seat on a 747.
There's not a lot of space that someone's going to be able to slide passer.
Especially not a full-grown man.
And again, a 747 is not a car.
So you can't just hook a seat belt to it and hold it in place.
The more realistic option would be trim the aircraft out
and then try to run off the aircraft.
Or hopefully, you've opened that hatch and went through the hatch door
like I talked about earlier.
But you're not going to be able to get a yoke to get held by a seat belt
and hope that's gonna do it. That is never gonna work.
If they done my hatch idea, he honestly could have been flying it
until the last second
and then you could get out of that hatch probably in 5 or 10 seconds.
So it wouldn't really matter at that point.
All right! Let's go over the final scene of Air Force One
where they've gotten almost everyone off the aircraft.
Now, if this movie was made now
they could have just lowered Sully in through that escape hatch
that I was talking about
and then he could have smoothly landed on the water
and everything would have been saved.
Speaking of Sully, if you haven't seen the Hollywood vs reality
that I did on his movie,
I'll put it right up here.
I talked about the great job that Sully,
his first officer Jeff and the entire crew did
to safely get everybody off the aircraft.
It was one of the earlier Hollywood vs reality movies that I did
but it was a great movie so go check it out.
All right, 74 crew!
I look forward to hearing from you.
Until then,
keep the blue side up!