If you notice even the most subtle mistakes when it comes to aviation and planes in movies or TV, you just might be an aviation geek!
Case in point…the episode “20 Hours in LA” for “The West Wing”. On the one hand, they did a good job with the stock footage of Angel rolling out after landing.
Sadly, watching President Bartlet and entourage boarding a 747 showed that was as far as it got. Whilst the plane’s paint job was pretty good…real aviation geeks couldn’t help but notice the nacelles were those of General Electric CF-6 engines just before the shot from the door where one could clearly see the winglets at the wing tips.
They were boarding a 747-400 which is a very different bird than the Air Force VC-25A which is based on the much older 747-200B model. The 747-200B does not have winglets and certifying aftermarket winglets would be prohibitively expensive when 744s can be brought back from the desert for a song.
Just in case you were curious! Just be thankful I wasn’t watching “Die Hard 2″…the aviation mistakes in that film would fill a decent sized book! 😉
(Edited…VC-25A never flew with Pratt JT9-Ds though it certainly could as well as Rolls Royce RB-211s (certified 1975) and the GE CF-6s (certified 1972) that power it.)