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Mistakes

When everyone is getting ready to leave the oil drilling base, Dennis Quaid is standing at the rear hatchway of the plane wearing his leather jacket, the camera view changes to a view of behind him, and he's not wearing it, he's in a yellow shirt, when the view goes back to the front, he has the jacket on again. See more...

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Flight of the Phoenix (2004) - 21 corrections

Directed by John Moore, starring Dennis Quaid, Giovanni Ribisi, Hugh Laurie, Miranda Otto, Tyrese (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Drama, Thriller

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

Mistakes
Corrections
Questions
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The crew crashes into the Gobi Desert, which is in Northern China. Yet the people are speaking Cantonese, which is the local dialect for Southern China (Quangzhou/Hong Kong area), instead of Mandarin (the official language) or any of the Northern dialects. [What people? They're in the middle of an empty desert. If you're talking about the nomads: well... they're nomads. That means they're from all over. They could speak any language, Chinese or not. Just because they currently live in the Gobi doesn't mean they're originally "from that area."]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
During the take off of Phoenix, the port rudder cable is parted. During the close up of Elliot fixing the parted cable, the wind is pushing his hair from his left to right. Given the direction he is facing (port) this would mean the wind is blowing from the tail to the nose, not nose to tail. [The plane is moving forward at a fairly good speed, and Elliott is resting on the plane with his left side to the front of the plane, because it is moving forward, his hair would then blow from left to right.]
Edit
When Dennis Quaid and his co-pilot are going through the pre-flight checklist, they come to the cockpit windows and state that they're "shut and locked". A few seconds later, in an external shot, the co-pilot's window is wide open. [The window is wide open throughout the scene. Townes and his copilot use the preflight check list as an excuse for some macho banter, and neglect such vital procedures as checking that control surface pins are removed (maybe that's why they crashed!) and that engine and hydraulic oil pressure is sufficient for take off. They shouldn't have done things the way they did, but that just makes it a series of character errors.]
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All that exposed skin, and nobody gets a sunburn. [I noticed several characters with sunburn, in particular Hugh Laurie.]
Edit
What happened to all the camels and horses when they have a shoot-out with the nomads? We only see one nomad charging away on a horse, but there were at least 2 camels and 2 horses at the nomad's camp. The camels in particular would have been very useful when stranded in the desert, and then the survivors wouldn't have had to continue to rebuild the plane. [About all they could do with them is shoot them and eat them - assuming they like very, very tough meat. The fleeing nomads left no water or fodder behind, and without them animals would be a huge liability, not an asset.]
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When the C-119 first lands at the drilling rig, Frank Towns gets out with one wheel chock and chocks the port landing gear. With his hands empty and Kelly following, he walks round to the starboard side, calling out to A.J. (inside the plane). There we see the starboard landing gear has already been mysteriously chocked. No one else is anywhere near the aircraft. [A.J. isn't inside the plane - he is outside checking the starboard engine. Townes meets him there after he talks to Kelly. His conversation with her is easily long enough for AJ to put the chock in place.]
Edit
After crashing the C-119, when the sandstorm stops we see the entire aircraft is totally buried except the tip of one tail, and they have to force open a roof hatch through which sand proceeds to run. This is a depth of over twenty feet of sand over an area of at least 10,000 sq.ft. Yet the next scene, apparently the same day or just a little after, shows the aircraft totally dug out except for one wingtip. Not only have the survivors shifted approximately 12 thousand tonnes of sand in just a few hours, but there is no apparent reason why they would even bother (at this stage there was no plan for salvage). [In fact there is a very good reason to dig the aeroplane out - to make it visible from the air. All survival courses teach the same thing; stay with the vehicle, and stay visible from the air.]
Edit
We are told that July is the hottest month in the Gobi Desert (which is true) and that it is much hotter than the Mojave Desert in July. This isn't true. In some parts of the Gobi it can get pretty hot in July but due to the high altitude typical July temperatures are 3 ~ 5 degrees cooler than typical Mojave July temperatures. And at one point it is claimed that the action is close to the Altai mountains, and that part of the Gobi is much cooler. [Townes is trying to convince people to stay put instead of trying to walk to 'safety'. (In fact he is doing things by the book - when lost, you ALWAYS stay with the vehicle.) If he were to say " . in some parts of the Gobi it can get pretty hot in July but due to the high altitude typical July temperatures are 3 ~ 5 degrees cooler than typical Mojave July temperatures . " I really don't think he'd be quite as convincing, do you?]
Edit
We are told that the crash is near the Altai mountains, and also that the plane may have crossed the Chinese border. The terrain is very sandy with some rocky outcrops, and the Altai are depicted as low, arid, rocky hills. However the part of the Gobi which is very sandy and close to the Chinese border is hundreds of miles from the Altai. And the Altai are massive, snow capped peaks with glaciers, rivers, lakes and forests. [We are told they MIGHT have crossed the Chinese border - they don't even know what country they are in. They MIGHT be near the Altai mountains - Townes could be wrong, or deliberately lying to convince people not to try to walk to 'safety' (ie the magnetic Altai mountains will affect the compass).]
Edit
Some parts of the Gobi are indeed very arid but the size of the truly arid part is exaggerated in the movie; it is ~much~ smaller than the Sahara where the original movie was set. If they are already near or south of the Chinese border, then by simply travelling roughly south east they are bound to find either a major watercourse or substantial civilization within ~at most~ 250 miles, and in the region that is very sandy and subject to severe sandstorms, more likely 40 to 50 miles. Not talking here about trying to strike on a particular small oasis or town, but something so big you can't miss it, e.g. the Hwang Ho (Yellow River). A fit person travelling at night on reasonable ground can do 250 miles in 7 nights. (Actually, as ultramarathoners have demonstrated, a very fit person on good ground can do it in two to three nights.) The suggested impossibility of walking out for help was just an inaccurate plot device forced on the scriptwriter by moving the setting to the Gobi. [First, fifty to seventy miles in a waterless desert is just as bad as two hundred miles. In fact, you'd be dead in thirty miles because of the desert Catch 22 - you cannot carry the weight of water needed to keep you alive. Ultramarathoners do not rely on the water they carry - they have rest stops and support vehicles, facilities sadly lacking in aircraft crash sites. Secondly, the survivors do not know where they are. They don't know which country they are in, let alone which direction the nearest town or river is. They make the right decision (given the need for drama in a film) - stay with the vehicle.]
Edit
In several long distance shots, plus generally working around the wreck, we see there is a completely flat area about 70 m in diameter demarked by several low mounds, followed by a gently undulating area about 200 to 300 m in diameter, then rising ground (dunes) on either flank but continuing fairly flat for quite some distance fore and aft. But a minor character goes out during the night to relieve himself and manages to fall down a hill so steep and long he injures his arm. Unless he went hundreds of metres to relieve himself (climbing a dune en route) there was nowhere near the wreck this fall could have occurred. [He DID walk hundreds of metres from the wreck. The next day, they other survivors can't even find his body.]
Edit
When Dennis Quaid arrives at the site where the man fell out of the airplane, he finds spent bullet casings right next to the body. If someone was using the body for target practice (like he says, and which is the only good reason for shooting at it), the brass would be much farther away. [It was just a figure of speech. Just another way of saying "he was shot".]
Edit Corrected by XIII
They can build a small aeroplane out of the wreck of a larger one - a considerable feat of engineering in anyone's books - but they can't rig a radio antenna? It's just a length of wire and a stick. [When talking to Token Woman, Townes states that they have no radio, not that they have no antenna. A propellor smashed through the cockpit directly behind the pilots's seat, and could have destroyed the radio or other equipment upon which it relied to operate.]
Edit
When Talbot and the crewman return from the debris field, they approach the C-119 from the nose. The debris field would be in the opposite direction along the flight path. [There's no one named Talbot in the movie. And if you mean the scene where Towns goes after Liddle, they return from the starboard side of the plane, not the nose. Yes, the debris field should be behind them, but it's quite possible - even likely if he's right-handed - that Liddle veered to the right while walking, which would take him back in the direction the plane came from.]
Edit
In the scene where the group is standing in front of the graves for the two men who died, there are two crosses with two mounds of dirt higher than the ground showing where the men are buried. However the body of the man who fell out of the plane wasn't retrieved, as we find out later when he is all shot up. Therefore the area around his cross should be flat. [You're right that there can't be a grave for the man who fell out, but it is not a mistake to have two graves. THREE people are dead at this point: the guy who fell out, the doctor, and the man who was sitting at the front next to Liddle.]
Edit
After the lightning hit the plane, A.J. comes running to see if the captain and Elliot are okay. When he is under the wing, he touches it. But after lightning has hit this wing, he never could have touched it, his fingers would have melted. [Like all metal framed aircraft the C119 is designed to survive lightning strikes by conducting the electricity through the main spar and out of the wingtips. Not being earthed, a lightning strike on an aircraft is nothing serious and this film hugely exaggerates the damage for dramatic effect. There might be a flicker of the instruments and a pretty impressive bang, but the temperature of the aluminium skin would definitely not increase.]
Edit
In the scene where they are deciding to rebuild the plane, you can see a good eye behind Sticky Fingaz' eye-patch. [You see what LOOKS like a normal eye. He could have a damaged optic nerve, meaning he is blind in the eye but it looks 'normal'. He might have damage to the nerves which open and close his eyelid, meaning an eyepatch is essential but the eye looks normal.]
Edit
When discussing building a new plane, Frank Towns observes that the remaining engine puts out "2000 pounds of thrust." A piston aircraft engine's power is measured in horsepower; "pounds of thrust" would be used to measure the power of a jet engine. [If you do a search in google on "prop" "pounds" and "thrust" you can find many websites discussing propeller engines and the pounds of thrust they produce. Horsepower means nothing when you need to understand how much thrust will be produced and its effect on the new aircraft that is much smaller than the engine was built for.]
Edit Corrected by Joshua Skains
During the crash the co-pilot gets knocked unconscious while standing in the back, then the plane spins around - it goes upside down a couple of times - but the man's body doesn't move even though he's not buckled in. [Yes, his body moves to the rear of the plane. When Quaid goes back and checks on everyone he is back by the tools. He fell near the front, MAYBE center area of the seats. He just got lucky and got wedged in place.]
Edit Corrected by dizzle
In the scene where the oil tank is exploding. When it goes to the close up of the explosion, right after the far-away shot I believe, you can see a man walk in from the right, glance at the camera, then duck down really quickly. [No, that's supposed to be a character in the film. If you look closely he is shown in the scene right before ducking, when the overview shot comes he ducks again (it's the same explosion, just the latter shot shows a second before the first shot ended).]
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