It’s not often that Hollywood releases a major film with an airline pilot as its main character, and since the pilot at the center of Flight has a major substance-abuse problem, the Air Line Pilots Association has issued a statement to reassure viewers. “Fiction on a movie screen doesn’t represent a profession in the real world,” said ALPA. “The more than 50,000 ALPA pilots in the United States and Canada embody the highest possible standards of training and professionalism. … a thrilling tale should not be mistaken for the true story of extraordinary safety and professionalism among airline pilots.” The film has won mostly positive reviews from critics and an 80-percent audience rating on the Rotten Tomatoes film-review site.
Denzel Washington, who plays the central role of the pilot, said he trained in a simulator to help make the cockpit scenes realistic. “I didn’t literally get to fly a plane, but we worked in these MD-80 flight simulators, which is what [pilots] actually train on,” Washington told MTV. “That was great. That was cool.” AVweb‘s editorial director Paul Bertorelli checked out the film over the weekend; click here to read his reaction in the AVweb Insider blog and join the conversation.
