Orval Fairbairn wrote:

My wife and I went to see "The Aviator" yesterday.

Comments:

The planes and some of the flying sequences were great -- especially the
S-38 and the reproduction of the H-1 and the CGI of some of the other
planes.

Acting: Leonardo DiCaprio should *never* have been cast as a pilot! His
"flying" scenes looked like an airheaded actor playing pilot -- moving
the control wheel all over the place; the head motions and general
demeanor when "flying" were obviously the work of an actor and director
who knew absolutely nothing about flying planes.

Script: Hughes is talking about expanding TWA to international routes
(during the middle of WW-II) and talks about competition from other
airlines and mentions Lufthansa as a competitor. Lufthansa didn't get
resurrected until the 1950s -- 10 years *after* the movie conversation.

People tell me that this kind of stuff just goes whistling over
the heads of the general public but I can't stand it.

I watched, what the hell was it now, "Falling from the Sky...the
flight of the Gimli Glider" or some equally very bad title about
Air Canada's near disaster when one of their new 757's ran out of
fuel near Winnipeg Canada a few years ago.

I was lucky enough this past summer to meet Mr Bob Pearson who
was the Capt on that flight. He owns a sailboat and puts into our
Silver Fox Yacht Club here occasionally. He told me that they had
hired him to do some bit parts and to act as a technical advisor
but when he saw the script and found that they wouldn't change
some things, one of which was to have him run down the stairs and
kiss the ground after landing, that he refused to be associated
with it and made them take his name off the credits...good
man!...

It was the most sickening piece of trash that I ever saw I
swear...it makes pilots out to be little more than untrained
drivers who know very little about their machine ("Hey...isn't
this the lever that lowers the 'air generator' that gives us
power? - let's try it"). Honest to God, it went like that.

It could have been a great movie, the incident that it tries so
poorly to portray certainly was a heroic effort by Pearson
(although the whole incident was his fault in the first place of
course),

That nobody died in that f*up was no less than a miracle for
sure. Bob agreed with that too, he said that the hardest part was
deciding when to stop 'sideslipping'...he said "Frigging numbers
were whizzing through my brain a mile a minute, until I just knew
I'd screw it up by doing that and went by the seat of my pants",
straightening out 'when it felt right...'

All that said without the slightest hint of braggadocio...

Very well done IMO
--

-Gord.
(use gordon in email)