- You wanna know a little pilot secret?
- It's not like I have a bomb in here.
[dramatic music]
- Whew!
- Hi, my name is Fatima Shafi.
[bell dings]
- [Narrator] Fatima is a captain
for a major U.S. commercial airline.
She's also a former
avionics engineering officer
for the Pakistani Air Force.
- Today I'll be breaking down clips
from movies and t.v. about flying.
Overweight take off, "American Made."
- No mas, no mas.
No mas.
- But there's plenty of room gringo.
[man speaking in a foreign language]
- Guys, guys.
It ain't about room, all right.
It's about weight.
- Just because there's empty room
that you can see in the aircraft,
does not mean you can fill it
up all the way to the brim.
- No mas.
- An aircraft, every time before it flies
is required to be checked for performance
and weight and balance.
You calculate a center of gravity
for that particular flight
and you calculate how
much weight you can carry
in what parts of the aircraft.
The aircraft has to be within
a certain operating on flow
for it to conduct the
entire flight safely.
- Whoa, whoa, where the hell you think
you're goin' big fella.
Either, I fly the big fella,
or I fly your product.
- Tom Cruise was correct
in kicking the guy out.
He was probably also flying
the aircraft further away,
so he's carrying as much fuel as he can,
maybe even more to conduct a long flight.
[plane engine revs]
[men chatter]
[plane engine revs]
- The depiction of an
overweight take-off their doing
is pretty much on point.
[plane engine revs]
[stall warning horn beeps]
He tries to lift off and the
stall warning horn goes off.
That stall warning horn is an indication
that a stall is about to occur.
[stall warning horn beeps]
He does not rush the take-off,
which is exactly what he should have done.
When a stall occurs there's
just not enough air flow,
and the wing basically quits flying.
[stall warning horn beeps]
[plane engine revs]
He wants to get rid of
the drag of the aircraft,
so he lifts the landing gear up.
Up until that point, I was with it.
But then, he's still stalling,
which means he still
doesn't have enough lift.
[stall warning horn beeps]
The aircraft's still not ready to fly.
You're forcing it to take off.
And now you're hitting
trees, and you keep flying?
[plane engine revs]
Not very realistic.
- I do tend to leap before I look.
- Sky Law, "30 Rock."
- Steward.
2118 that guy.
- Excuse me.
Mr. Sweatpants.
We're gonna need to check that bag.
- And that is Sky Law.
- No, there's no such
thing as Sky Law per se,
or codes that we use
with flight attendants.
As a matter of fact, most of the times
when we get on an aircraft to fly it,
we're meeting the crew for
the first time in our lives.
- Excuse me young lady, are you old enough
to be traveling alone?
- So Matt Damon in this
scene, is acting all like,
has all this authority as
captain of the aircraft.
Is impressing Tina Fey.
- Roger that.
- And is wearing the wrong hat.
[bell dings]
He's the captain of the aircraft,
he is wearing a co-pilot hat.
- You wanna know a little pilot's secret,
besides the fact that we get
discount at Sunglass Hut?
- Pilots get discounts at a lot of places.
Sunglass Hut at the airport
is actually one of them.
But pilots get pretty much discounted
all the retail outlets and
food stores, restaurants
at the airport.
- Didn't they say half
an hour over an hour ago.
- So 30-minute rule.
- People are starting to get
a little antsy back there.
- Yeah, it's gonna be
about another half hour.
- I wish I could say it never existed.
However, I can now say with a
lot of confidence and faith,
looking into your eyes, that
we're not doing it anymore.
- The half hour thing it's a trick.
It's enough time so that people know
they're gonna have to wait,
but it doesn't upset them.
- And can you tell me when we
might be in the air captain?
- Sure, in about a half an hour.
- So when I as a captain
give out any information
it is pretty much exactly what I know.
- Oh folks half an hour means forever, oh.
- Bird strike, "Sully."
[plane engine revs]
- Well you know the only way
to get out of LaGuardia on time?
- What's that?
- Fly outta JFK.
- The flight attendants complaining
about how awful LaGuardia
is, is very accurate.
The nickname for LaGuardia in the industry
is LaGarbage.
- Funny.
- A lot of reasons
though LaGuardia is hated
are the similar reasons
why most passengers don't like it either,
it's an airport that's
overgrown its capacity.
A little bit of weather
causes extensive delays.
Once you've landed the taxi time
is gonna be a few hours.
- Go easy.
- I love LaGuardia.
My favorite airport in the
whole, wide world is LaGuardia.
- Fuel verified, 19,000 pounds
required we 21.8 on board.
- 19,000 pounds required 21.8 on board.
- The pilot and co-pilot,
when they're taking the runway
that conversation that's
happening, it's not conversation,
it's not talking, it's pure business.
- Go.
- Go the center.
- It's called a sterile flight deck.
Pilots cannot talk to each
other, have any conversation,
that's not about the particular flight
they're flying, until the aircraft
is above 10,000 feet.
It may seem like, why is
there a need for two people
to say the same thing.
- 19,000 pounds required,
we got 21.8 on board.
- 19,000 pounds required, 21.8 on board.
- The first officer as the pilot flying
calls out 19,000 pounds
required, 21.8 on board.
The captain verifies it.
It's called a take-off fuel,
or minimum take-off fuel
for that matter.
- Birds.
- Whoa.
[birds clatter]
- The aircraft is designed
to withstand a certain limit,
or number of bird strikes.
There's no hard and fast limit for it but,
it's not like the engine
just one small bird
will bring the airplane down.
- Get out the QRH, lost
the thrust in both engines.
- QRH is the Quick Reference Handbook.
Any abnormal situation
is handled by the QRH.
It's like a cookbook.
It is a step-by-step-by-step what to do.
- Mayday, mayday, mayday,
this is cactus 1529,
we hit birds.
- Once an aircraft says
mayday, he owns everything.
Every help is available to him.
Teterboro tower, I need a runway.
Cactus 1549 needs to go
to the airport right now.
Newark tower, what have you got?
- [Man] We have runway
29 cleared and ready.
You need emergency landing?
- Yes.
- They're giving him every option.
They stop the airspace.
They give him every airport, every runway
that's available to him.
They'll tell you everything
they know that will help you
make a good decision.
- [Man] Cactus 1549 turn right 280.
You can land runway one Teterboro.
- We can't make it.
- If you look at this flight,
everything that has happened
in it was very good,
it was superior airmanship as we call it
and that's why it led to
the result that it did.
They followed all the right steps
that should have been followed.
- Ignition start.
I'm startin' the AP now.
- And you see the result
that came out of it.
[plane splashes]
Emergency landing, "Con Air."
- We got one engine shot
to [beep], zero fuel,
and we're droppin' too fast.
The Strip's where I'm gonna land,
only the word is crash.
- Landing on the Las
Vegas Strip, bad idea.
Out of all the places in Las Vegas
what they could have picked,
the Strip was the worst.
- They were insane.
- Being a pilot is not just
physically flying the aircraft.
A lot of it is the decision making.
- Las Vegas airport,
it's just past the Strip.
Can you see it?
- Well Viva Las Vegas.
- So right at this spot, where they are,
they're pretty much lined
up with McCarran Airport.
- It's right there man you can make it.
- So they're facing west in that shot.
McCarran Airport has two
runways, runway 19 left,
and 19 right, which is just to their left.
All they hadda do was make a left turn,
and they had a straight
shot to that runway.
[metal clatters]
[people yell]
As soon as they hit the
guitar at the Hard Rock Cafe,
they lose half their wing.
They actually lose an aileron,
which is a control surface
that controls the roll
movement of an aircraft.
The roll movement would be
this movement of the aircraft.
[dramatic music]
If they lose the left aileron
on the left part of the wing
that should be end of that flight.
The airplane should
not be able to maintain
level flight after that.
It should go into a roll right away.
[metal clatters]
[dramatic music]
Landing on Las Vegas Strip
was the worst of the ideas
a pilot could make.
- Ah shucks.
- Air traffic control,
"Saturday Night Live".
- All right, no there's Ted
Talk for monikers big man.
I know you're coming out
all peelie wallie up there,
but I'm gonna have you doin' your skate
faster than a whip
against a hawthorn okay?
[audience laughs]
- What?
- English is English, but it
comes with all kinds of accents
from all over the world.
One of the harder ones is
actually Scottish is hard.
- I'm so sorry, your accent is very thick.
Is it possible to not have it, over?
- You can also ask them to repeat,
but there is only so many times
you can ask them to repeat
before annoying them.
- What's he comin' in at?
- And they can also be busy,
so it's not like you can just ask
for them to repeat everything.
- Have a wee shifty out the
window down at the ground,
tell me if you can rest your goggles
upon Auckintoshin plane station.
- The instructions are standardized.
I'm expecting a certain type
of instructions about to come.
Every instruction usually
contains a heading,
altitude, or a speed.
I have an idea what's coming,
but if it was actually
legit aviation instructions coming,
I probably would have been
able to understand it.
I should be able to understand it.
[man speaking in a foreign language]
[audience laughs]
- What?
- So I am speaking with
a perspective of being
an American person going
into other countries.
But I have heard a lot of
complaints from foreign pilots
that when they come to New
York, especially Kennedy
they have the hardest time
with air traffic control
for two reasons.
One it's American English.
Second, New Yorkers speak really fast.
And third, JFK or New York
airspace is one of the most
complicated airspace systems in the world.
They're dealing with a lot of traffic
and the operation is very fast.
So all of that is difficult to understand.
- Say again.
- Loss of flight control, "Flight."
[people scream]
- Power back, power back.
- [Automated Voice] Stingray pull up.
Stingray pull up.
- As soon as the aircraft
goes in a nose dive,
the aircraft starts screaming,
"Whoop, whoop, pull up."
- Stingray pull up.
- That doesn't happen at high altitudes.
That is a system in an aircraft
that stops it from impact
when it is close to ground,
or close to structures,
or close to terrain.
At 30,000 feet the aircraft
does not say pull up.
It's just adding drama
and chaos to the scene.
- We need to dump the fuel, do it!
- Fuel dump is only on
very large airplanes
that carry fuel for hours
and hours and hours.
Domestic airplanes that have
a range of four or five hours
don't have fuel dumps on them.
[siren whoops]
[fuel sprays]
It's not like a light switch on and off.
You turn the fuel dump
on and all of a sudden
the entire aircraft is out
of fuel, it takes time.
- Think you can reach my side?
[siren whoops]
- I can't reach it.
- Pilots are there to fly the aircraft.
They can reach every switch and button
from where they're sitting
at their station, buckled in.
- Stay strapped in, stay strapped in.
Margaret! Margaret!
- They don't need Margaret to
come for that manual control
which does not even
exist on that aircraft.
This movie was made post 9/11.
In the United States post 9/11,
the flight deck door is not open.
The flight attendant is
not going in and out,
just like it's a walk in the park.
- Oh Lord Jesus we're inverted.
- Brian listen, we're level,
we can maintain altitude like this.
- We're losin' oil pressure,
both failure, both engines.
- We're all right, we're flyin'.
- Fire in the left engine.
- Put it out.
- Let's talk about that fire.
The first officer in a
very scared way said,
oh my God, we have the
right engine on fire.
- Oh no, fire in the right now.
- So he goes ahead and
pulls that one lever
that's lit up all red.
Once you pull that handle
you shut that engine off.
Then, a few seconds
later the first officer,
once again all freaking out
says, we just lost an engine.
- We lost the left engine.
- Of course you lost an
engine, you just shut them off.
There should be no power.
There should be electricity
on the airplane,
everything should go dark.
They shouldn't be able to
have any radio communication.
The very next thing is he asks Margaret,
- Margaret full power.
[engine blasts]
- You just shut those engines off.
What are you adding power to?
- We're gonna roll it okay.
- What do you mean roll it?
- Gotta do something to stop this dive.
- So this aircraft has a problem,
but it is in an uncontrolled
nose dive situation.
The captain decides to
fly the aircraft inverted
so he can stop losing that altitude
that they're losing extra fast.
That makes sense.
[engine revs]
- Gear up.
- Gear up.
[engine revs]
- They go inverted, they
arrest the rate of descent,
buy themselves time, and all is fine.
But ow when the come out
of that inverted flight,
or back level again,
- We lost all power.
- How did the aircraft not go
back into a nose dive right away?
- Are we glidin'?
- [Automated Voice] Too low terrain.
Too low terrain.
- They have not fixed the problem.
All that engine shutting down
and the fire shutting down
and all the drama that just happened
has not corrected the problem.
The problem still exists.
This is a very peculiar situation,
not something that you
train for every day.
- Like a video game right.
- But it has to have rhyme or reason
and logic behind doing what you're doing,
which does not exist in this scene.
- [Co-Pilot] Oh Lord.
- Can't help you now brother.
- Gun fight, "Non-Stop".
[engine revs]
[people scream]
[bullet blasts]
[people scream]
So there's one gunshot fired.
A bullet goes through the
window of the aircraft.
There's wind like there's a
hurricane inside the cabin.
One small bullet hole
will not make so much wind
and debris flying all over the cabin.
[wind whooshes]
[people scream]
The bullet hole was not
enough to cause a rapid
decompression in the cabin,
but the loss of the window did.
There's rapid decompression
and the oxygen masks come down,
which is a correct depiction.
But, how did the window
just decide to fly out.
There's no good reasoning behind that.
[plane engine whines]
- 8,000 feet, come on, come on.
- Those panels that are
lifting up when the aircraft
is going down are actually speed brakes.
He is tryin' to get the airplane down fast
in the shortest amount of time.
- 8,000!
[plane engine whines]
The maneuver they're
showing you is not coherent
with that weightless situation.
To get the aircraft weightless,
you would actually do the opposite.
You climb the aircraft.
When you reach the top of the
climb, when you push back down
is when you get weightless.
[engine thumps]
Commercial airliners are
not designed to be flown
in a weightless situation.
None of that should have happened.
- You're right, I failed.
- Unruly passenger, "Meet the Parents."
- You know what, get
your grubby little paws
off of my bag, okay?
It's not like I have a bomb in here.
It's not like I wanna blow up the plane.
- No, we still cannot say the word bomb.
There are certain trigger
words that get attention
and bomb is one of them.
- Bomb, bomb bomb, bomb, bomb, ba bomb.
Bomb, bomb, ba bomb, bomb, ba bomb, bomb.
- In this particular
scene, the flight attendant
was very, very nice and she let this go
much further than it
would have in real life.
- Take those little
sticks outta your head,
clean out your ears,
and maybe you would see
that I'm a person who has feelings
and all I have to do is do what I wanna do
and all I wanna do is hold onto my bag
and not listen to you.
- We'll get someone on the aircraft,
something very similar to this saying,
"Oh I swear my bag fits, it
will fit, it always fits.
It fit in the previous flight."
- The only way that I
would ever let go of my bag
would be if you came over here right now
and tried to pry it from
my dead, lifeless fingers.
- Not everybody is there to
get you, or is against you.
[man yells]
This happens more often
than people can think.
Pilot schedules, "LA to Vegas."
- What's your problem man?
- My problem right now
is that I'm talking to
an overrated hack whose
stick work is pedestrian.
- What did you say?
- So basically what he's tryin' to say
is you're not that good of a pilot.
That is a big insult for a pilot.
- I was never serious about taking over
this God forsaken flight.
I mean come on Dave look
at me, I fly international.
- There is some unwritten
prestige involved.
The pilots who come off
of international flights,
somehow they have to just say,
"Hey I'm just coming from London.
I just landed from Paris."
I have done that, and
I see others do that.
So, it's there.
- I fly international.
- Okay, stop calling
it international Steve.
Let's call it what it is, it's Canada.
- He's actually right.
For the purposes of airline
international pilot schedules,
Canada is not considered an
international destination,
neither is Mexico.
- Well that counts, they
have their own money.
- That doesn't even fit in wallets.
- Engine fire, "Air Force One."
[radar warning beeps]
[plane engine revs]
[man speaks in a foreign language]
[dramatic music]
- So the Air Force One
is intercepted by Migs.
Mig is a Russian fighter jet.
[dramatic music]
[bullets blast]
If there's an aircraft
with more than one engine,
losing an engine is not
a huge big emergency
that is going to make
you fall out of the sky.
- I got it.
- Right after that he says,
well we're turning to the right.
- Moving right.
- Very typical response
in an engine failure.
There is less stress on the right side
than the left side.
Naturally, the aircraft will
rotate towards the right
which is happening in this case.
- Left rudder, you have to compensate.
- Pull back that number one engine.
- Negative, slow down,
you have to trim it out.
- Harrison Ford's first
remark is, oh should I pull
number one engine back.
- Should I pull back
that number one engine?
- Which is a good idea for
someone who's not a pilot.
However, we don't take away the power
that we already have on an engine,
or the thrust that's being produced.
- Negative, slow down.
- How we compensate for it
is by the use of rudder.
- Left rudder, you have to compensate.
- Rudder is a flight control surface
that controls this motion of the aircraft.
Kind where the nose yawing
towards the right side
you would apply left rudder.
Once you've lost an engine
for the entire duration of the flight,
you'll have hold that rudder
in to keep the nose like this.
As soon as you release
the pressure on your leg,
or if your leg gets tired,
the airplane will turn back
towards the right again.
- You have to trim it out.
- How do I do that?
- The trim is just relieving the pressure
the pilot has on the rudder holding it in.
- It's like riding a bike.
- Out running DEA plane, "American Made"
- [ Barry] Holy God!
- [Man] This is the United
States Drug Enforcement
Administration, we are ordering
you to land immediately.
- [Barry] The DEA was
using these fancy new jets
that we couldn't out run.
- Tom Cruise is in a smaller aircraft
which consumes or burns less gas
as opposed to the fancy
jet that the DEA is flying.
- [Barry] They could go fast,
but we could go slow,
for a long time.
- So he forces them to come
down at a lower altitude,
fly slower, burn more gas.
Aircrafts do burn more gas
when they're lower and slower
as opposed to flying higher and faster.
And that is why all the commercial flights
are flown around 30,000 some feet.
[warning signal bongs]
- [Automated Voice] Low Fuel.
- We gotta turn around guys.
- No you don't wait that long.
If you're waiting for the
aircraft to tell you low fuel,
you're way behind the
aircraft to begin with.
- We're bingo.
- So bingo fuel is where
you would not continue
what you're doing and just
go and land the aircraft
to bring it back on the ground.
- [Man] Time to head home.
- Maximum altitude, "The Crown".
- May I?
- You have control.
- I have control.
- So let's talk about how
Prince Philip takes control
of the aircraft from the
pilot who is flying it,
who's also a trained pilot.
It was done very professionally.
- You have control.
- I have control.
- It's visually and verbally verified.
It's not like, I'll fly a little
bit, you fly a little bit.
- [Pilot] Sir, the service
ceiling for this aircraft
is 45,000 feet.
- The service ceiling of the aircraft
is a fixed, definite number published
in the aircraft manuals.
The absolute ceiling of the
aircraft is a variable number
that depends on the
temperature of that given day,
the weight of the aircraft and
other environmental factors.
In fact if conditions are favorable,
the aircraft can climb
from the service ceiling
to the absolute ceiling.
- You and I both know it's
safe to climb way beyond that.
- Do not do this at home.
[engine rumbles]
It is not a practice that's common.
Is it doable? Yes.
And that's exactly what
Prince Philip is saying
in the scene.
The difference between how
fast the airplane can go
and how slow the airplane
can go becomes very little
at that high altitude,
which we in aviation terms
call the coffin corner.
- We're currently at the very limit
of what this aircraft can do.
- Exactly what the pilot
in that scene says,
we're operating this aircraft
to the very limit right now.
- [Philip] God isn't it beautiful.
[bell dings]
- If you have ever thought about flying,
if you've ever looked up in the sky
and seen an airplane and
think, I wish I'd been there,
the only one recommendation
I can give you is do it.
The feelings that you have
when you're soaring above the clouds,
that is a feeling that is indescribable.
