On a Wing and a Prayer

This movie comes really close to being good, but falls short because of the addition of pointless and annoying characters. Characters that have no value in driving the storyline or improving the plot in any way.

I wanted to enjoy this movie, it's based upon a true story that is amazing on its own, and really doesn't need any "help" or additions to the story to make it more interesting to viewers.

For some reason, movie studios love placing kids in pointless roles in movies. It happens way too much and only serves to break up the tension and lowers the quality of the movie. Children overreacting and being dramatic in a true story like this isn't funny, comedic, or cute, it's just infuriating and annoying.

I don't think it's a stretch at all to say that the movie could have easily been improved with some good editing. If the filler scenes with the two "aviation enthusiasts" children were removed, and instead we simply had a few more scenes with the interactions between the aircraft and the aircraft tower, it would make for a much more enjoyable watch.

...but I couldn't. The first part of the movie was just tedious. I know it was about building up the family context, but it was tedious. There were several points where I almost gave up on the movie. The blonde daughter was very annoying. There was a point where she had to grab an epi pen out of a backpack in the cargo hold, and instead of her unfastening the webbing in the cargo hold, for what seemed like a long time we had to see her panicking as she tried to frantically reach through the webbing to feel for the backpack. All I could think was "how stupid of a daughter did this guy have?" Even my 10yo son would've tried to unhook the strapping. On the plus side, it's a family friendly movie and maybe a preteen or younger might find the movie entertaining. Most adults would probably not get past the mediocre acting and plot development.

I have no actual knowledge of the real story that inspired this movie, but the end credits show photos and give explanations of the real people involved. It says of the King Air 200, the subject plane, "One of the most difficult to fly."

My wife and I watched this streaming on Amazon Prime. Both of us feel the same, the movie is done in a somewhat hokey and sentimental style, most of it in the air as they are trying to figure out how to land the plane safely while communicating with ATC. We both think the real story has a much better movie in there somewhere but this one was not particularly well made. Still, it was a fun watch, I laughed a number of times but probably where no humor was intended.

NB - I asked my son, a pilot who has flown a King Air a number of times, to watch the movie and see what he thinks. His opinion wasn't very favorable at all, like most of the rest of us he thinks the filmmakers botched the whole movie, especially the parts that involved flying the plane and landing.

We are glad we saw it for the knowledge that the real people are OK, but in truth it is not a very good movie. The part I actually enjoyed the most were the two younger kids in their home, not far from the Florida airport, following the plane on Flight Aware and speculating whether the plane would land safely. I don't know if that is factual or not but I found it entertaining.

Sometimes less can be more. They went way too over the top with this movie. They didn't need all the extra stuff, it was dramatic enough to begin with. They didn't need kids explaining everything. They didn't need to create any additional stressful situations on the plane itself when it was already stressful enough anyways. They could have simply told the story exactly as it happened and the movie would have been better for it. Sometimes I can understand movies really hyping things up, but this was never going to be an action movie and they tried to turn it into one, which didn't work out well, in my opinion.

If you want to actually watch this as it happened, there's a Youtube video about it on the channel FS Mania titled "PILOT DIES, Passenger Lands King Air". It recreates the entire incident in Microsoft Flight Simulator while using the actual transmissions from the incident. It's about 10x better than this movie is, while also only taking up about 40 minutes. Just watch that instead. Save yourself some time and watch a better video while you're doing it.

As a hobbyist pilot, if there's an airplane movie, I'm watching it: Positives: 1) Good family movie that is not afraid to use faith. 2) it's got cute Heather Graham who did not sell herself to the monster Harvey Weinstein. 3) Heather praying the Lord's Prayer (I'm not religious, but the way this nation is heading to, I'm becoming more of faith).

Negatives: 1) Lacking serious aviation technical advice. Vertical speed indicator's showing a gradual descend, yet the altimeter is climbing like a rocket, and many others. 2) Like some have mentioned, annoying kids.

I do fly many Angel Flights in South FL, hopefully I'll hear Doug over the radio one day.