If you’ve been to an airshow featuring Chuck Aaron and the Red Bull aerobatic helicopter, you might have a sense of deja vu watching the opening scenes of the new James Bond film, Spectre — that’s Aaron in the pilot seat, flying his signature barrel rolls and a series of outrageous maneuvers. Aaron, who is the only U.S. pilot certified to fly aerobatics in a helicopter, told AVweb this week he got a call from the movie people after they saw him flying on YouTube. “They tracked me down and asked if I’d be interested in doing a Bond flick,” he says. “And I said, in a New York second!” He flew the Red Bull helicopter to Mexico, and spent about six weeks there and 40 hours of flying — which comes down to about eight minutes of screen time.
All of the flying scenes are real, Aaron said, with real air-to-air filming; none of it is CGI. “That’s why they hired me, so they wouldn’t have to use special-effects as much,” he said. “They shoot on real film [for IMAX], it’s not digital, and it makes for awesome quality.” Some of the interior shots during the flight sequence were filmed in a studio in London, he said. The only change needed to get the helicopter ready for the film was a coat of temporary paint. Two other aircraft also have important roles in the film — a Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander that Bond flies to chase the bad guys down a mountainside, and in the final scenes, Bond’s enemies pursue him in an AugustaWestland AW109 twin-engine helicopter. A McDonnell Douglas MD500E also makes an appearance in the Morocco scenes.
Aaron flew Red Bull’s specially modified aerobatic Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm Bo 105 for 10 years. He recently retired from airshows, flying for the last time at the Red Bull air race in Las Vegas just a few weeks ago.
