Hollywood Needs More Aviation Technical Advisors

While flipping though the channels a couple of nights ago, I came across a made-for-TV movie on the Lifetime Network entitled, “Rough Air: Danger on Flight 534.” I was riveted.

I was riveted because it was the biggest piece of crap I think I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen High School plays that were more realistic than this movie. I only watched for ten minutes, but two minutes was all I needed to determine that I shouldn’t watch it any more. The other eight minutes were spent laughing and repeatedly saying, “Oh my God, this totally sucks!” Movies like the classics Airplane and Airplane 2 were written to mock movies such as this, and frankly, the Airplane series got more of the details right.

Where do I start? The interactions between the crewmembers were totally, utterly and completely wrong. The a-hole Captain was devoid of any semblance of the standard command attributes, or even the general personality, that a pilot must have. There is no way that a pilot like him could ever have made it to the cockpit of an airliner.

The Flight Attendants in the movie had conversations that would never, ever happen. Their dialogue made them sound like automatons, and idiotic ones at that.

The technical details of the airplane were laughable. In the takeoff scene, the Captain asks for “E.P.R.” power. It’s supposed to be pronounced “eeper.” OK, that’s a small point, but the really funny part of the scene was when the First Officer reached up in response to the “E.P.R.” callout and pushed a button clearly labeled “Flight Deck Door.”

The radio calls were astonishing in their bogusity. It was as if the producer had hired a non-pilot scriptwriter to just imagine what a radio conversation with Air Traffic Control must sound like. (He could have asked me, for crying out loud.)

Here’s the last scene I witnessed before leaping out of my chair and running out the door to take a deep breath of fresh air and save my own life: Mere minutes before a flight, a First Officer on administrative leave is asked to fly a trip with the demanding Captain. He actually flies the trip! No recurrent training in the simulator, no Proficiency Check, no paperwork, no nothing. He just hops in the right seat and starts punching buttons. Wow! What an operation!

OK, Hollywood. Your wait is over. My services as an Aviation Technical Advisor are now available to any producer, director, or scriptwriter who needs an acceptable compromise between perfect reality and what’s feasible to do. It’s my strong belief that what gets captured on film can satisfy the budget, the shooting timeline, and the technically-pickiest of audiences. You just have to care a little. Directors and producers must not let a poor script drag a production down to the sad level of Rough Air.

The problem is, you might not know much about aviation, and therefore might not even know it’s a poor script. That’s fine. I don’t know jack about gardening, wine, or brain surgery.

Just don’t assume your script’s OK. Find someone who knows about this stuff. Get an expert to review the thing early, preferably one who can also write some quick and high-quality revisions for you, if they're needed. That way, your finshed movie will stand out as “true” in everyone’s mind, not just the lowest-common denominator out there.

I know that Rough Air was just a straight-to-video TV movie, but people everywhere are silently (and not so silently) begging moviemakers everywhere to take heed – the world does not need another movie, of any kind, that so completely ignores the technical details. Please!