Five Awesome “Emergency Landing” Scenes from Movies

Emergency landings in movies don’t always seem that real simply because something so unbelievable is usually done to make it seem more entertaining. But regardless of this the movies do get a few things right here and there, no matter that they kind of squash it with the need to keep it exciting. Engine failure, a disturbance in the earth’s magnetic field, not having enough fuel, you know, those kinds of things. The kind of things that usually don’t happen because normal everyday flight crews check to make certain that they’re not going to be a factor in any given flight. But hey, this is Hollywood, so anything and everything can happen and we’ll watch it because, quite simply, we don’t want everything to be real when we sit down to a movie, right?

So buckle up and settle in, here are some of the best emergency landing scenes that Hollywood has to offer.

5. Flight

Before you get all antsy and start wondering just how closely this film follows the supposed true story that it’s based upon, get this. The flight that it’s based off had no survivors. Plus, doing a barrel-roll in midair seems like one of the worst things you could do with a plane that’s filled with passengers. It almost seems like you would crash and burn as soon as you flipped the bird over. And yes, that is Tamara Tunie as a stewardess. I had to look twice too.

4. Airplane

It might be a comedy but heaven help us all if a pilot like this had to land our planes. The hilarity of this movie is kind of lost on today’s generation that look at an airport and tighten their butt cheeks when they get to the security station. Even when you’re in terminal easing up isn’t really that possible when you think about the security measures and the extraneous worries there are when it comes to flying. Why can’t it just be a fun, carefree moment like this? Yes, I’m being sarcastic.

3. Con Air

So since this happened in Vegas, does it stay in Vegas? People that had thought they’d seen everything likely had to re-evaluate that mindset when they saw a plane full of prisoners come rocketing down the Strip. The really messed-up thing about this is that there would probably be those willing to bet odds on whether anyone survived this wreck and if so how many.

2. Madagascar 2

It’s a crash landing, not an emergency landing, but then it’s hard to take an emergency seriously when you disregard the red light that means danger. Granted, they took care of it, but in a way that might actually shock most passengers and cause some to question the pilot’s level of skill. But really, they’re cartoon penguins, what did you expect?

1. The Core

So much of our technology is dependent upon the world we live in, actually most of it is, but in this clip you can see that things like navigation, which is pretty important when flying such a sophisticated piece of machinery, are heavily affected when the earth is not in tip-top shape. But the landing is a bit sketchy mostly because of the lack of reaction from the worker at the end. How in the world do you not notice your coworkers bugging out suddenly?

So emergency landings are typically filled with drama, but sometimes it’d be nice to see a hint more realism.

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