Movie portrayal of flying wanting

In the trailer for the blockbuster superman movie Man of Steel, we see the character flying through a cloudy sky. As he accelerates, a cloud formed by the pressure changes across his shockwave, appears.

He punches through the sound barrier and flies into the distance, leaving two contrails (trail of condensed water) behind him.

As a pilot, I appreciated the level of detail in this sequence, save for the contrails. These lines of condensation that form behind aircraft engines at high altitude could not be generated by a flying individual.

Movies and television, for better or for worse, have become the dominant form of entertainment for many people and the shows and movies can teach as well as shape our opinions and values.

Unfortunately, Hollywood is not known for its fidelity to the truth; its job is to entertain. Background knowledge that we acquire from movies can be seriously flawed. For example, the side grip method of holding a gun popularised by hip hop culture, is wildly inaccurate.

Crime stories keep having more complex plots to keep savvy audiences watching. Back in the 1990s, I could tell who the bad guy was in the first five minutes of the show. Today, that’s a different story.

Movies portrayal of flying is similarly wanting. When a plane suffers an explosive decompression, it doesn’t become a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking everything from the plane. While in these rare events, some people have in the past been ejected out of planes, once the initial event passes you do not expect to be sucked out.

When a plane loses power from both its engines, it does not immediately plummet to the ground. It will glide for a significant distance depending on the altitude.

Planes can’t be started immediately like cars. Even if you did the flows from memory, I estimate a solid twenty minutes before you could take off on a 737 from a cold aircraft.

Most routine airplane malfunctions are as interesting as watching grass grow.

Inaccuracies

In the recent movie Flight, pilots were up in arms over the many inaccuracies in the movie. The weather sequence and the inverted flying in particular inspired much gnashing of teeth. Personally, I thought it did a passable job at the procedures.

Which is actually why I chose the Superman example. When we go to movies we suspend disbelief — an alien in tights can fly, Rambo can decimate an entire garrison.
We watch movies as a form of escapism and for entertainment. Any education that happens is a happy side effect.

So next time you are watching a movie, treat it as a harmless escape from reality, not a lecture from a professor whose class you have to pass.

Dr Ondieki is a pilot with an international airline.