Spitfrnd
Banned
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2008
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Since we seem to be having some much fun with some of the movie themes (well with certain exceptions anyway
), I thought I start a new one for movies with a main theme that completely flawed or factually bent. Now I don't mean Fantasy of Sci Fi themed ones, which of course are meant to require us to suspend disbelief, but those that pretend to some basis in reality.
The one that comes first to my mind of this group is Die Hard II. The base premise here is that on a winter night perfectly coordinated with abysmal flying weather and holiday air traffic, a group of maverick former black ops commandos highjack Dulles Airport by disabling the true airport electronics and substituting their own to deliver false information to the many arriving aircraft. Their purpose, why to clear the airport and arrange the release of a drug lord and leading "general" of some fictional country where the Commando leader seemingly "did some business" who just happens to be flying into Dulles (with one guard) for trial in the United States. Of course, this is a Die Hard movie, so it is not expected to overwhelm us with its plausibility but here the fundamental basis for the all that follows is completely wrong.
Of course, we have the amazing coincidence of weather, season and drug lord flight schedule, rather thin but that pales in significance to the bigger problem. It is simply not possible to so completely takeover an airports communication and even if it were done, that would certainly leave all aircraft free to communicate with flight center, other airports and even each other, which in the DC area would have given them a huge range of options to find alternatives. Even more importantly, the movie asks us to accept that these planes are all circling Dulles just waiting to run out of fuel because it is the only open airport available to them given this amazing weather. That "perfect storm" scenario just can't happen. All commercial and military aircraft have strict flight requirements that do not allow them to proceed or to (or even designate) a given airport unless they have a useable alternate that is forecast to be well above any weather minimums. When these conditions are not longer met, even in flight, they are directed (and would be done so by center controllers) to proceed to another useable alternate well before any minimum fuel conditions arose. Even if you assume that magically there were suddenly no suitable commercial alternatives within range there certainly would have been military ones, with near zero ceiling GCA weather landing capability that would be open to commercial traffic in such a dire emergency.
And then how about that movable Instrument Landing System (ILS) glide path that caused the British airliner to crash (undoubtedly anti British theme). It is impossible for the terrorists to have set the ILS slope 200 feet lower. ILS is a fixed system of radio signals and the position of the ground and runway never changes, nor needs to be changed. Moreover, even if it could have been, the pilots would be monitoring the aircraft multiple barometric and radar altimeters (which are set to give a minimum ground clearance warning) so the notion that they would have flown the plane into the ground based on a modified glide path is absurd. And then there is the wee problem that in order to permit an ILS landing, there must be a forecast ceiling of at least 200 feet (150 for certain equipped aircraft). On a commercial or military aircraft with two pilots (all of the ones in the movie) during an instrument approach, it is protocol for one to fly the instrument approach and the other to monitor but also maintain a constant visual scan for sight of the runway. Even dark, the runway would have been visible in time for a pull-up at Dulles with its huge runways and flat terrain.
Of course this movie has many, many other factual impossibilities but none so striking to me as its main premise. Nonetheless, I must confess I enjoy it as a guilty pleasure. Bruce's anti hero character is just such fun to watch as a sort of Dirty Harry on some serious uppers.
Please feel free to add your favorite premise buster.
), I thought I start a new one for movies with a main theme that completely flawed or factually bent. Now I don't mean Fantasy of Sci Fi themed ones, which of course are meant to require us to suspend disbelief, but those that pretend to some basis in reality. The one that comes first to my mind of this group is Die Hard II. The base premise here is that on a winter night perfectly coordinated with abysmal flying weather and holiday air traffic, a group of maverick former black ops commandos highjack Dulles Airport by disabling the true airport electronics and substituting their own to deliver false information to the many arriving aircraft. Their purpose, why to clear the airport and arrange the release of a drug lord and leading "general" of some fictional country where the Commando leader seemingly "did some business" who just happens to be flying into Dulles (with one guard) for trial in the United States. Of course, this is a Die Hard movie, so it is not expected to overwhelm us with its plausibility but here the fundamental basis for the all that follows is completely wrong.
Of course, we have the amazing coincidence of weather, season and drug lord flight schedule, rather thin but that pales in significance to the bigger problem. It is simply not possible to so completely takeover an airports communication and even if it were done, that would certainly leave all aircraft free to communicate with flight center, other airports and even each other, which in the DC area would have given them a huge range of options to find alternatives. Even more importantly, the movie asks us to accept that these planes are all circling Dulles just waiting to run out of fuel because it is the only open airport available to them given this amazing weather. That "perfect storm" scenario just can't happen. All commercial and military aircraft have strict flight requirements that do not allow them to proceed or to (or even designate) a given airport unless they have a useable alternate that is forecast to be well above any weather minimums. When these conditions are not longer met, even in flight, they are directed (and would be done so by center controllers) to proceed to another useable alternate well before any minimum fuel conditions arose. Even if you assume that magically there were suddenly no suitable commercial alternatives within range there certainly would have been military ones, with near zero ceiling GCA weather landing capability that would be open to commercial traffic in such a dire emergency.
And then how about that movable Instrument Landing System (ILS) glide path that caused the British airliner to crash (undoubtedly anti British theme
). It is impossible for the terrorists to have set the ILS slope 200 feet lower. ILS is a fixed system of radio signals and the position of the ground and runway never changes, nor needs to be changed. Moreover, even if it could have been, the pilots would be monitoring the aircraft multiple barometric and radar altimeters (which are set to give a minimum ground clearance warning) so the notion that they would have flown the plane into the ground based on a modified glide path is absurd. And then there is the wee problem that in order to permit an ILS landing, there must be a forecast ceiling of at least 200 feet (150 for certain equipped aircraft). On a commercial or military aircraft with two pilots (all of the ones in the movie) during an instrument approach, it is protocol for one to fly the instrument approach and the other to monitor but also maintain a constant visual scan for sight of the runway. Even dark, the runway would have been visible in time for a pull-up at Dulles with its huge runways and flat terrain.Of course this movie has many, many other factual impossibilities but none so striking to me as its main premise. Nonetheless, I must confess I enjoy it as a guilty pleasure. Bruce's anti hero character is just such fun to watch as a sort of Dirty Harry on some serious uppers.
Please feel free to add your favorite premise buster.
