New Aviation Movie Review – Flight – Alaska Airlines Flight 261

Flight is based on a real life incident involving Alaska Airlines Flight 261

I recently watched the new aviation – themed movie, Flight starring Denzel Washington.   In it, a troubled airline pilot experiences an in-flight emergency where the horizontal stabilizer jams in the down position, sending the jet into a deep nose dive. Because the captain is a maverick pilot, he is able to miraculously save 102 people through a daring maneuver.  However the accident also forces him to deal with some of his other demons with alcoholism and drug abuse.

I really enjoyed the movie and the rest of the weekend I spent thinking if the flight maneuver was aerodynamically possible.  Basically, he inverted the plane while it was in the steep dive, which managed to arrest the dive and allow him some semblance of control of the aircraft.   Given the stress that is associated with in-flight emergencies, it is doubtful that it could be done.  But is it completely impossible?

Forcing the aircraft into an inverted position when the elevator was down would theoretically cause the aircraft to want to pitch up instead of down. Though because the horizontal stabilizer is now inverted as well the effect would be much lessened. The control of the aircraft from the ailerons would be backwards, and lessened given the fact that the airflow is supposed to be on the top side of the wing and not bottom.  I’m not sure if it’s possible, but probably very aircraft specific.  It’s probably not impossible…but the fact that the airplane doesn’t immediately reassume the nose down position when rolled the right side up after flying upside down? Definitely not realistic. 

It is interesting to note that the accident in this movie is based on a real life incident involving Alaska Airlines in January 2000.

In this incident, the horizontal stabilizer jammed and the pilots attempted to fly the aircraft inverted – but they didn’t have enough altitude to recover.

In any case, it is a great movie – and I highly recommend it to anyone, particularly aviation enthusiasts like myself.  The figure below shows what happened on Alaska Airlines flight 261.

Looking to buy Flight DVD?

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