User Reviews

This movie was meant as comedy? Rarely seen a movie worse than this. The text is like those from a bad soap opera, the camera work fits in exactly. The timeline in the film is utter nonsense. An aircraft that already was flying for an hour by 700 miles is within two minutes passed by an aircraft that had to come from across the country. The acting is not much better. Unlikely characters, real silly technicalities. Top of the nonsense is the change in mid-air through a fuel hose in a commercial airliner by a simple door. A waste of time to watch this movie. Probably this film was meant seriously but there is really nothing good to say about it. Maybe you should approached this as a parody .

Oh, wow! This movies is so awful that it quickly stopped being ridiculously stupid and funny, and just returned to being awful again.

Just one over-worn "disaster movie" event after another, which frankly doesn't make sense in so many places in the first place.

Just for a few highlights:

What on earth is this blinking light doing in the cockpit that's controlling everything and wants to kill the captain and injure the first officer, change the flight plan and eventually try to kill everybody?

Is it H.A.L. Jr., the son of H.A.L. that went amok in the classic "2001--A Space Odyssey" movie from the 1960s? At least this H.A.L. Jr. didn't say, "I'm sorry Dave. You can't do that." after killing all the rest, as his dad did with the crew on the "2001" spaceship.

Only after "H.A.L. Jr." drops the plane to 10,000 feet does it decide to turn off the oxygen and everybody begins to pass out. Well, pressurized aircraft don't pump oxygen into the cabin in the first place. It's outside air that goes through a pressurization process, even at 35,000 or more feet.

And at 10,000 feet, you don't need a pressurized cabin. They could open a window in the cockpit. Even back in the 1930s, the first DC-3 could fly over the Rockies, during a test, on one engine at a higher altitude than 10,000 feet, and it wasn't a pressurized aircraft.

For that matter, passengers who went to the bathroom and lifted the lid to the toilet on a DC-3 got a straight-down view of the ground.

And it just goes on and on. The SR-71 "Blackbird" that transferred the guy to the Boeing 747 was designed to operate at several times the speed of sound, not the speed of a 747.

The 747 aircraft itself, in flight, was stock footage from Boeing.

And, when the gal finally landed the plane, she didn't lower the flaps until the wheels almost touched. Huh? And the guy in the tower forgot to tell her how to reverse thrust, increase RPM and apply the wheel breaks to bring the aircraft to a stop.

UGH! And they all lived happily ever after.

I was actually hoping the plane would go down, just to end the dreadful mess. Every conceivable cliché ever used in an air disaster film was present in this one. I kept watching simply in anticipation of the next over acted scene, thinking at some point it would have to show a sign of something loosely plausible. The hole just kept getting deeper, right up to the end. Were all flight safety rules set aside by the FAA for this particular flight? I'm not an air safety expert, but shouldn't there be at least a co-pilot at the controls at all times. I gave it a two because even if for all the wrong reasons I did purpose to sit through it. It could have almost been a comedy. I often flashed back to one of the AIRPLANE movies of the seventies expecting a laugh. Watch it for it's goofiness. That's the only entertaining thing about it.

A plane's engine is on fire. The pilot opts to cut off the fuel in flight to stop the fire, however the engine doesn't restart and the plane crashes. The operator was blamed for "human error" even though the black box (never mentioned) would have exonerated the pilot. Brad Dourif plays the evil capitalist wanting to exploit the accident to promote his new CD-70 automatic pilot, based on predator drone technology. Casper Van Dien is not too sure about using the M-5 eh ah CD-70. Lets see...if I was to guess they use the CD-70, it messes up and Casper must save the day by killing giant alien bugs. And the reason why I am guessing is that it became too painful to watch the film all the way through. It was bad...real bad, as in destroy your copy, don't give it away bad.

The acting and script felt like a bad movie made for TV circa 1975. Don't waste your time or money.

Without taking anything from the plot, there is to mention, that some inaccuracies appear in this film: - In the beginning (the first plane appearing with the elderly captain) has the landing gear extended during the flight at 25.000 feet altitude. This is highly unrealistic, as the gear would not stand such a force. Normally landing gear is retracted immediately after getting airborne. - Lightning cannot affect the pilot's activity in the cockpit. The plane builds a "Faraday's Cage" meaning that lightning, when hitting the plane, gets diverted in different directions along the fuselage, causing no impact to people inside the plane. - the captains decision to shut down the burning engine in the first chapter of the film was not wrong, so it cannot been taken as an argument for an automated pilot. Having said this, the captains behavior is quite indecisive for an experienced pilot, he appears rather senile.

Don't waste your time watching this terrible movie. It is so fake and ridiculous it hurts to watch. That stealth plane connected to that thing effortlessly like they do it every day but yet the guy hand him a rebreather at the last second as if they wouldn't have been already highly prepared. The guy going on the plane never asked before hand like how the hell am I going to breathe? Then the guy just jams stripped wires into a hole all twisted together as if that would ever fix anything . Sorry this move is just terrible.

I have watched four minutes of this film, and can bear to watch no more. In these four minutes alone, I have seen:

1. An airliner flying at FL250 (or 25,000ft) with the landing gear extended and with the flaps in a landing configuration.

2. The first officer says that the #2 engine N1 is falling, then it cuts to the engine display where the N1 is stable.

3. The captain and the first officer are both flying manually, each holding their yokes at the same time.

4. After the flight attendant informs the pilots that the engine is on fire, the first officer looks at the captain and asks: "What do we do? Captain?" - in fact he should know exactly what to do, as it would have formed a huge part of his training and type certification. There are checklists that exist for that very procedure.

5. They then try to restart the engines by slamming the throttle levers to full, then idle, then full, then idle.

6. They make a mayday call to 'Central Tower' at FL250.

7. Footage of the plane 'crashing' reveals a third engine...

I'm sorry, I can't bring myself to watch any more. If you know absolutely nothing about aviation, then perhaps you would be able to watch this film - but I just cant do it. I'm sorry.

This film is strangely reminiscent of "Executive Decision." The first film, improbable as it was, was actually a good film, but not worth re-watching. This film, however, was a complete waste, not even worthy of the bargain bin at Wally World.

In "Executive Decision," the improbability was using an F-117, a single seat fighter/bomber, as a transport for far too many men. This film uses an SR-71 in approximately the same role, that of a personnel transport. Couple that with the passengers (?) of the SR-71 not being suited up for high speed, high altitude flight, and your disgust level rises quickly. And why send an aircraft capable of Mach 3 flight speeds after an aircraft that doesn't exceed Mach 1?

Then, there's the issue of people passing out from lack of oxygen -- AT 10,000 FEET! The air may be thin at that elevation, but not non-supportive of human life.

Finally, there's a remote connection with "Die Hard 2," where the wife smacks the antagonist at the end of the film.

This DVD would make a dandy coaster, albeit an expensive one.

The maiden flight of a computer flown 747 goes wrong because of a computer glitch inserted accidentally by the son of the owner, causing the plane to veer off course into an electrical storm where it is naturally hit. With the two standby pilots either dead or incapacitated the task of saving the plane from being shot down by the military, the original inventor of the device is forced to enter the plane via an untried process from another plane (previously used in the film Executive Decision) and bypass the computer.

The actualities of this film are poorly researched. the acting is very wooden and the plot is so transparent as to be invisible.

The use of the SR-71 Blackbird in this film itself is laughable.

Any fan worth their salt will call BS on this one. It takes time to plan a mission for that beast, logistics, route planning, refuel points, getting the craft prepped, getting the KC-135Q tankers ready, ensuring the backup craft is also prepped, and the list goes on..

Hollywood got this one wrong where the SR-71 Blackbird is concerned. They chopped the footage and added in an actor in a standard flight suit WRONG. Didn't even bother to edit the footage to remove the original pilots left hand, in the pressure suit, running up the throttles which is bright orange compared to the flat color of the flight suit the pilot was wearing. The original cockpit audio was completely scrubbed, which would have fit the movie much better than the junk chatter the tossed in there. Since when does the SR-71 carry passengers?? They would have us believe that they are going to carry two people in the central bay of it, it doesn't have one. That area is a fuel cell, not to mention it's not pressurized and subject to all manner of stresses. Supposedly this was to be flown to catch up with and dock to a commercial passenger aircraft to transfer people, seriously? Utterly laughable.. It was so bad I turned it off.

They used the majority of footage from the following video. https://youtu.be/hZIGKwhQ8dw

If the link does not work, search YouTube for Blackbird101, and locate his video SR-71 Blackbird Launch. This contains all the scenes from the movie in full along with the original cockpit audio.

The engine ignition sequence, hangar rollout and marshaling, taxi to runway, takeoff and climb to altitude. Whoever made this needs to learn how to research something before making it public.

I try to be openly objective about movies, I have seen many bad movies, and some like Sharknado are so bad that they become funny, this movie is so bad that it cant even be funny. I think an average person with no theater experience and average writing skills could have done a better job with this crap-tastic excuse of a movie. There are hundreds of issues with this movie other than the lack of decent directed acting.

1. The FAA would not in the foreseeable future accept an aircraft that is completely controlled by an Artificial Intelligence with no remote switch or remote manual control, and even with remote control would it be extremely unlikely to get accepted.

2. Why would an aircraft a FL250 (25,000 feet above sea level) have its landing gear down and flaps set to landing configuration? THERE IS NO REASON, EVER! 3. At one point in the movie the main characters seem to easily move the throttle's forward and backward with no force what so ever, later on the "hero" has to help his wife push the throttles forward as she seems to be too weak to do so. This is not how a Boeing aircraft works, and Airbus will be like this yet with minimal force required, however this aircraft was a Boeing 747.

4. Why would they use an SR-71A Blackbird which is no longer in service and has not been in service since the 1990's, when there are plenty of other aircraft that can intercept the 747 without burning hundreds of thousands of gallons of JET-A1.

5. The "Air-Bridge" that was used is entirely a farce, and attempting to attach something to an aircraft at FL360 (36,000 feet) going about 480 KTAS (610 Miles Per Hour) is going to have disastrous consequences, the tube was also not even pressurized and Casper Van Dien would have died with everyone else on the plane as they opened the door; however in real life the door would not open due to safety measures placed on the door which prevent it from being opened while the aircraft is airborne.

Do yourself a favor and skip this movie, save your eyes for something better like Sharknado.

So what if we invented an airplane that can fly itself?

Instantly, I see the worst case scenario here.

You know who didn't? The genius who plans an investor flight and installs new software that lets some viruses in so that the plane starts flying like a maniac.

So the military says, "Let's shoot it down."

And the inventor says, "My wife is on that plane."

Hijinks ensue.

At least this time Fred Olen Ray has a cast with Casper Van Dien, Nicole Eggert, Brad Douriff and Patrick Muldoon, all of whom are in here for name value and occasionally hang back and allow the other cast members to shine.

The strange thing is that the computer malfunctions yet is not evil nor is it out to really kill anyone. So the conflict that you expect in these movies isn't here. There is a scene where Casper flies in some stealth stock footage and appears inside the refueling part of the plane, ready to save every one of us.

Anyways, you can kind of consider this a Starship Troopers mini-reunion with Casper and Muldoon in the cast. Unlike the convention that would have them, you don't need to pay $110 for a photo op.

TURBULENT SKIES is another extremely cheesy and laughable B-movie disaster flick from Fred Olen Ray, a genre specialist. It's not really notable for anything at all, other than uniformly wooden performances from the entire cast and a general low budget and unconvincing feel. A computer-controlled passenger plane gets a virus and goes out of control and only Nicole Eggert can safely land it. Casper Van Dien and Patrick Muldoon team up again some 13 years after STARSHIP TROOPERS but it's hardly worth the wait, and Brad Dourif has a little role too. Skip it.