A movie about a real-life "What would you do in this emergency?"

Discussion Hub Real-life Aviation
1

Like many of you who are into MSFS, I’ve wondered whether I could successfully land an airplane if the pilot became incapacitated, and there was no one more qualified aboard.

The movie ‘On a Wing and a Prayer’ is based on the true story of Doug White, a 56 year-old pharmacist and his family, who in 2009 are aboard a King Air owned and piloted by their friend. 10 minutes after takeoff, the pilot has a heart attack and dies. Doug has done exactly one discovery flight in a C172 (he was terrified and did poorly,) and now he has to land the plane with the help of ATC and a guy in another state who has a lot of King Air flight time.

Overall it’s not a great film, with a real ‘my first attempt at making a movie’ feel to it, and thanks to having logged a few hours in MSFS, I noticed a bunch of procedural errors made by everyone. But I enjoyed it, overall, if only for the ‘what if’ aspect. What if I had to save my family by taking the controls of a King Air in difficult weather conditions? How would I handle it?

Dennis Quaid plays Doug White. Heather Graham is his wife. A couple of the other actors do a pretty good job of conveying the harrowing experience. I particularly liked the dialog between a Miami ATC giving instructions, “OK, Doug, I need you to turn left heading two-seven-zero and descend to 10,000.”

Doug says, “I have no idea what you just said.”

He ends up landing the plane, saving his family. Interestingly, Doug later became a multi-engine rated commercial pilot. I guess success really does breed success.

It’s on Amazon Prime. If you’ve seen it, let me what you think. Even if you haven’t, share with us your thoughts on how you would handle a similar situation, considering the amount of time you’ve spent in MSFS.

4 Likes
3

16% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Didn’t Dennis Quaid use to be a reputable actor?

If you want to watch a similar but decent and more realistic film then I’d recommend Airplane.

4

You funny. I guess Otto was a more realistic autopilot.

5

Not as funny as that film, I gave up on it after 30 minutes. It’s truly awful!

1 Like
6

The acting and script was pretty bad.
The baron pilot helping him had a crash in his past and didn’t fly anymore, and why did he need to build a cockpit in his house to explain the procedures, that seemed a bit silly.
The brother dies, the pilot dies, air traffic controller is an alcoholic, the daughter eats candy with peanuts and has a severe allergic reaction and passes out, the other daughter takes 20 minutes or so to find the bag with the epipen , big storm, severe cross wind on landing attempt. I was waiting for a malfunction in the landing gear, bird strike, or an engine fire to pile on all the things going wrong. Did they leave the stove on at home?
And the two kids that sneak on the airfield on bikes that the security guard can’t catch up to in the patrol car.

7

Sounds like this would be a better (and more relatable) version to watch.

Looks like that channel has several videos on the topic.

8

The Fate of Flight 174 is a good watch, typical cheesy TVM moments.

9

This scenario has happened many times in real life on small planes.

It’s clearly not as hard as people expect, and I’m sure if you manage to avoid the initial panic that the instinct to survive is a powerful provider of ability to achieve that which otherwise might not seem possible. Obviously getting a flight instructor on a radio helps enormously too.

10

I can imagine the cockpit banter, “So have you flown in real life?” “No, but I’ve landed a 737 in flight sim at Heathrow on 10fps and a bandwidth warning banner, dude, I got this.”

7 Likes
11

After playing MSFS for a couple years now I know for a fact that I could land any plane… but only once. Remember they call it an airport “terminal”. Oh! You said “successfully land”.

Agreed, the movie was not done well but I watched and enjoyed it. The main message was really more about faith. I think the weakest part was putting that side story of the two kids that was not part of the actual events.

12

I’ve landed an A320 with black screens…!

2 Likes
13

There’s always Airport 1975…. Oh wait isn’t that the one where the million dollar man gets airlifted into the cockpit to save the day???

14

It seems that might be fiction that the producers added to the movie to make it more exciting. A couple of sources I found with a quick search seems to agree that he had 130+ hours in a C172. By the time I had 130 hours I was a pretty competent pilot and certainly would have comfortably backed myself to at least safely (if not elegantly…) land a King Air

1 Like
15

Interesting. I agree. If you have 130+ hours in a C172, you would at least know that you needed to know where 7 things were in the King Air:

Throttles
Flaps
Gear Lever
Altimeter
HSI
Speed Indicator
VSI

With those, and some help from ATC, you’d have a fighting chance.

16

Surely you can’t be serious?!

17

Don’t call me surely

3 Likes
18

Personal Comments and Observations

Given a non-pilot was able to land a Cessna Caravan recently with just a talk down from ATC and a type rated pilot, it’s not that improbable. Remaining calm and having a modicum of hand-eye coordination goes a long way. There have been more than a few spouses whose pilot SOs passed away or went unconscious while enroute who were also talked down.

If you’re lucky enough to be on an equipped aircraft - Garmin SafeReturn ™. Hit that big red button and follow the on-screen instructions.

I’d argue someone with just enough “knowledge” to be dangerous is actually a worse candidate in many cases than someone who knows nothing about flying. There’s always that temptation to second guess ATC and any type qualified folks talking one down. Or to immediately take actions which one thinks makes sense but actually could make things worse off.

1 Like
19

Have a watch of the film (or as much as you can bear - your IQ will go down by circa one point per minute) and you’ll see that his past piloting experience is irrelevant.

The executive producers have a history of churning out terribly rated, god bothering films. Whenever trouble hits he just has to put his faith in his saviour and everything is okay.

20

Oh I was addressing the What Would You Do part. Most or all of these films are absolute train wrecks when it comes to accuracy, factuality, etc. Even Sully (especially the fictional combative part of the Airbus sim) wasn’t immune to “creative expression.”

Real Life Stories are always much more compelling than this genre. One is better off reading back copies of I Learned That From Flying Magazine column or AvWeb’s Short Final section. You’ll learn a lot more and get more colorful perspectives on GA and Commercial sector.

1 Like
21

I lasted 5 minutes. When on his discovery flight he says the nose feels heavy, the instructor tells him to essentially add nose down trim, he does so, and nearly stalls the plane?..by adding nose down trim, which was the opposite of what he needed. I hope I’m remembering that correctly. It was something nuts like that. The instructor told him to do the opposite of what he should have, which had the opposite (original) effect that it should have. I didn’t wanna spend the movie picking it apart.

By the previews, I assumed he was completely green to aviation, not that he was already interested enough in flying to go on a discovery flight. 1/10. Would watch in an apocalypse. Which is disappointing. I was happy to see a new movie about GA.

Point made, though. I guess we’ve all (simmers, non-pilots) thought about that scenario, or justified the time we’ve spent on MSFS when we’ll probably never actually fly a plane. “Hey, I could save a whole plane full of people some day.” It’s emergency preparedness training, right?