Falling from the Sky: Flight 174

I saw a dramatised 1 hour documentary of this accident on the Canadian Air Crash Invetsigations series "Mayday". The dramatised bits and interviews with passengers did a much better job of entertaining than this movie does, with the added bonus of conveying what really happened. Instead of focusing on facts this film opts to go for 1970s disaster movie approach with casting, acting, set design, music and the invitable padding out with irrelevant sub-plots. The only thing that is missing is here Charton Heston but I guess he was too old by 1995 to pass as an airline Captain! Much of the dialogue between the crew in this movie is invented and they simply don't cut it as professional airmen. There is too much sighing and emotion, and too little professionalism. Most of the time they don't look like they are sitting a real cockpit, but a large wooden room in a studio. Many of the events are exaggerated for sensational effect, and some events invented. This would be alright but it's poorly done and it just cheapens the movie. As do the invented dramatisations with passengers and crew. I supposed it's a watchable film in is own right...I mean, I did watch it!

I happened along this movie quite by accident. William Devane does an excellent job portraying an airline captain in charge of a doomed flight. The film was exhausting to watch. I felt like I was there in the cockpit helping Mr. Devane myself. I have tried for years to find a copy of this tape. Not until late last year was it available on VHS in the UK. I ordered the tape immediately. When the tape arrived, I was devastated to find out the VHS tapes sold in England and many other European countries are made on a different standard than ours here in the USA. I have the film on VHS in PAL standard but need it in NTSC or SECAM standard, whichever works in the US. I have been unable to get any help on this. I would very much like a copy of this film if anyone has any ideas.

I decided to watch this movie because William Devane was in the cast. I have enjoyed every movie he has been in. I liked the way, as captain, that he kept control, his determination to survive and a sense of humor throughout the ordeal. I laughed when Rick (Winston Rekert) says to him (Captain Bob-William Devane) that they don't want to cause the oxygen masks to pop out because it might panic the passengers. Captain Bob replies, "MIGHT panic?? I'd be surprised if they're not back there knitting their own parachutes right now!"

This movie is a true story of a real airliner accident where a miscalculation causes the plane to run out of fuel during a flight. I found the cockpit scenes to be fascinating, but there were some really stupid mistakes that distracted from the film enough to annoy me. The most ridiculous of these was the behavior of the crew then the plane finally comes to a stop on the ground. Instead of immediately proceeding with the evacuation of the plane, they all just sit there, supposedly thanking their maker for surviving. Then, they open the front and rear exits and proceed to all exit from the rear of the plane. Not one person exits from the front, even though the slide is in place and the drop much less than in the back. Even the cockpit crew feels some need to work their way through the smoke to the back of the plane to exit. Why? I was also annoyed with the endless boring background stories and thoughts. They actually have voiceovers at one point of what the passengers are thinking. It was very dull and filled a lot of time. Time was a particular problem in this film. It really could have been a good hour story. The real action takes place in the last 35 miles of the flight, which does not take very long at over 200 knots. Instead, we had one fifteen minute period when they only went five miles. Then, in a matter of seconds, they jumped 10 miles. I think this would have been more powerful had they told the ending of the flight in real time. The cockpit suspense was really good and I enjoyed it. The endless pouring over manuals and trying different thinks made the story more real. Had they been a bit more realistic about time and dropped the side stories, this could have been a really good TV movie (but not a "real" movie). I give it 5/10.

Just one observation - I've only been a pilot for a couple of years now. I believe airliners measure their fuel load in POUNDS or KILOGRAMS, not GALLONS or LITERS. Or is that just the way they do it in Canada? That's just one of the details that should have been checked out before film was ever put in a camera.

I have watched this movie 100 times, and every time it is just as exciting. The cast was wonderful, movie well written. Since 1995 I have asked ABC-TV to repeat it so that I could re-tape the movie. The movie ended the way you would hope it would. It definitely makes you think of travelling by ground not air. I wish everyone could watch it and enjoy it as much as I did.

True story concerning a Canadian airline,in 1983,the time Canada started to use the metric system. Some people were not use to metric system. When the airport employee,s were filling up the airplane tanks,not enough fuel was in them to complete their flight. The mistake the producers overlooked. In a scene at the airport,a man was exiting from a Lexus. Lexus,is the luxury car,produced by Toyota. In 1983,Lexus was not being manufacture by Toyota. I think,1989,was the first year that Lexus came out. The Lexus used in this film,i think was the ES-250. Producers of these films should do more research work if they wish to have their films authenic appearing. But TV films generally are budgeted.

It's watchable but terrible script, lots of bad acting and just laughable at the end. An aircraft emergency landing and couples hugging and holding young kids in front of them. I guess it'd make for a soft impact for the adult. Passengers still out of their seats on that long final approach for an emergency landing? Silly. Maybe emergency procedures have improved, I hope so. But even in 1995 they were better than that. Right from the start when the guys fuelling the aircraft were demonstrating their incompetence I thought this looks very stupid. And it was. I fly and how that aircraft continued to glide on and on I'll never know. The glide ratio of a jumbo jet is 18 to 1 but even at 1000 feet and still tavelling at 150 - 200 konts it took forever to get down. Oh and the shoreline when they were looking for the small airstrip didn't change view at all? I guess it was made in 1995. I liked the sideslipping to slow the descent, but did they forget the flaps? Doh. Oh and the comms, ATC and pilot, all a bit poor. Never mind. Amazon always has the rubbish B films. It killed an hour or two of lockdown anyway.

FREEFALL: FLIGHT 174 is a TV movie thriller much in the vein of the AIRPORT movies of the 1970s. In it, a Canadian airliner runs out of fuel mid-journey and has to find somewhere to land before it crashes. Sadly, this is a cheap and melodramatic affair, not convincing for a moment. William Devane heads the cast and is fine as the captain, but the story is slow and unconvincing, bogged down in the boring lives of the passengers and crew. There's never a real sense of danger or the kind of suspense required to make a thriller like this work.

I've read the other reviews posted so far and I pretty much agree. It is what it is -- and as a "based on a true story" plane crash TV-movie it was entertaining, at least as a late, late night cable TV offering. And I gotta agree with some of the other comments about a few of the shortcomings -- and maybe add a couple more. Why did the captain run back into the smoking cockpit?!? I think they either needed to have him explain himself -- OR, have someone else say, "Gee, that was dumb." They could have done away with the little inner dialogues each passenger had in the moments before the plane attempted to land. That was just goofy. And what was the deal with the kid on the bike on the runway?!? Chaos reigns as cars zoom to get off the runway and then a guy runs alongside the pavement yelling at the kid to get off the runway -- and the kid inexplicably looks at the guy with a weird expression that's a combination of confusion, fright, and "I ate something sour"... And they cut back and forth between the two about four times without ever conveying why the kid wasn't getting off the runway like the guy was adamantly yelling at him to do...