Not an aviation film per se, but Cliffhanger has one of the longest and silliest airplane crash sequences. It goes on and on, and when it finally stops with wings and engines a mile behind them the villianess reaches up to turn off the power to the overhead panel. Silly, but it looked good on camera.

We had a couple of old, nearly worthless, straight-pipe Lockheed JetStars and were contacted about possibly flying the aerial sequences and then using the fuselage for the crash sequence. The owner must have wanted too much to scrap the JetStar and the deal was never done.


Paul A.