Factual error: Before the damaged plane is dismantled, in some shots the three propeller blades of the port side engine are a mixture of clockwise and anticlockwise type. (The twist along the length of the blade goes the opposite direction depending on the type).
The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)
1 factual error
Directed by: Robert Aldrich
Starring: James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Ernest Borgnine, Peter Finch, Hardy Krüger
Factual error: Before the damaged plane is dismantled, in some shots the three propeller blades of the port side engine are a mixture of clockwise and anticlockwise type. (The twist along the length of the blade goes the opposite direction depending on the type).
Frank Towns: If you hadn't made a career out of being a drunk you might not have been a second-rate navigator in a firth-rate outfit. And if you'd not stayed in your bunk to kill that last bottle, maybe you might have checked that engineer's report on the radio and we might not be here now. All right.
Trivia: The plane which is shown flying at the end of the movie was actually built and flown for the movie. The stunt pilot Paul Mantz was killed while flying it for the movie, which is why the plane is not shown landing in the movie's final scene.
Question: Before I claim this as a continuity or factual mistake - a question: When the Arab raiding party shows up over the dune, they camp by a collection of scrub that was not all dead, some was green. There were also a number of plants in that low-lying area around the camp. Wouldn't the survivors had a better chance of surviving more days by digging for underground water in that area? Perhaps deep, but there. If they took 12 days to build the plane, it seems 2 days digging for water would have given them more time.
Answer: In the desert, the only place you can find water as at an oasis or maybe digging in a dry river bed. Those bushes would be extremely salty, and any meaningful water would be far too deep under the sand.
stiiggy