My wife and I own a couple small airplanes, half a dozen hang gliders, and live on an “airpark” which is 116 homes built around a small airport. Both of the last two fatal airplane crashes here were professional airline captains who had engine failure on takeoff in their personal general aviation airplanes and both tried to make a quick turns back to the airport.
Fortunately, neither of them had any passengers along with them and I am fairly confident that neither would have tried to make such a maneuver in their “work aircraft”. But they thought that they could take chances with their own airplanes and their own lives and beat the odds. Because yes, one of the first things people are taught in flight school is not to attempt to return to the airport if you experience engine failure on takeoff.
To slightly simplify things... the primary reason trying to return to the airport when having difficulty when taking off is so dangerous is that the airplane is already in a nose high attitude with an airspeed not much above stall speed. When the pilot makes a quick turn close to stall speed, G-force increases the stall speed, the wing starts to stall, the nose drops and the pilot doesn’t have enough altitude or speed to take corrective action before hitting the ground.
I actually witnessed a crash with a plane load full of skydivers when their hotshot pilot made a tight turn immediately after takeoff in a nose high attitude with full power. He stalled and went straight in from 500 feet and everyone onboard was killed instantly. Lawyers for the families of the skydivers tried to sue the engine manufacturer claiming that the engine lost power on takeoff, but the bent up prop and the testimony of witnesses such as myself indicated clearly that the engine was still developing full power on impact. So I have not only witnessed crashes I have been both interviewed by the authorities and testified in court about crashes.
Even though many of those we have come into contact with from the FAA and the NTSB over the years have been complete a**holes. And it is not in my nature to stick up for a bunch of federal bureaucrats, the witch hunt portrayed in the movie is fiction to add drama to a movie that is essentially about a routine non-lethal accident investigation.
I have subscribed to many aviation magazines and aviation safety journals over the years. In addition we have neighbors on both sides who work for the FAA and enjoy discussing high profile situations with us. There was nothing more than the expected response from the authorities whose job it is to investigate this type of incident. Of course they are going to have to rule out pilot error which necessitates asking a few probing questions.
But this “Hollywoodizing” of the story is a good illustration of why one shouldn’t trust any movie made by Hollywood to be historically accurate, even one made by a right wing leaning director/producer. It is all the same game, get people excited about something. Who is going to watch a movie essentially about the bureaucratic investigation process of a nonlethal accident? But until it is proven that the birds were trained by Isis to sacrifice themselves to go to birdy heaven there were no actual villains in this case. It is kind of a neat story about everyone doing their jobs correctly, but without vilifying federal officials what entertainment value would it have?
Thanks for perspective. I respect experience.