Iconic scene from Kai Tak International Airport

Iconic scene from Kai Tak International Airport -- a Cathay Pacific jet between apartment buildings in Kowloon City. "This photo was taken in To Kwa Wan just at the entrance of the airport tunnel (now Kai Tak tunnel)," recalls photographer Daryl Chapman. 
Some 15 years after it closed down, Kai Tak is reopening this week as Kai Tak Cruise Terminal

Can airliners really fly upside down?

Searchers investigate wreckage from United Airlines Flight 232 after it crash landed in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Aviation buffs question authenticity of Denzel Washington movie "Flight"
• Film's pilot consultant: Director Robert Zemeckis claimed artistic license
• United Flight 232 pilot Al Haynes describes losing flight control
• 1989 Sioux City, Iowa, disaster among aviation's most remarkable crash landings

(CNN) -- The pilot turned his airliner upside down. On purpose. And it saved nearly a hundred lives.

That's the idea behind one of the most intense movie moments of the holiday season: the core scene of "Flight," starring Denzel Washington as pilot Whip Whitaker. Hollywood sure likes Washington's performance. The role earned him an Oscar nomination Thursday on the heels of a Golden Globe nod in December. The film also received a nod for best original screenplay.

Spinning movie sets combine with CGI to make the scene "more than gut-wrenching," wrote CNN's Tom Charity. Hitflix ranks it among the "most harrowing plane crashes ever seen."

(By the way, no spoilers here.)

Thanks to masterful editing, we see a series of jerky, split-second glimpses of an "engine failure" panel light and then an uncontrolled dive and a plunging altimeter. In a stunning command decision, Washington's character rolls the plane over on its back. We see tumbling passengers and tossed luggage and finally a smoky crash landing in an empty field.

The scene stands as a breathtaking masterpiece of Hollywood's dream machine, but it pales in comparison with United Flight 232, a deadly real-life airline disaster that -- like the movie --- could have been much worse if not for remarkable efforts by heroic crew members.

Movie Pass: 'Flight'

Kelly Reilly talks working with Denzel

Denzel Washington hails real heroes

Movies not to show on a plane

But first, is it possible to fly a commercial airliner upside down? Would excessive G-forces destroy it? That debate is raging right now on aviation Twitter feeds and websites.

In the film, the pilot rolls the plane over to keep it flying longer. He avoids crashing into a neighborhood, saving countless lives.

"Flight" director Robert Zemeckis, creator of the "Back to the Future" series, enjoyed a bit of artistic license here, said Larry Goodrich, the film's pilot consultant.

Goodrich, a 32-year pilot -- first with the Air Force, then with Delta Air Lines -- trained pilots to fly MD-88s, which the movie's plane most resembles.

During production, Goodrich said he reminded Zemeckis and Washington that "you can turn an airplane like this over, but it's not going to fly like this very long. It's gonna go down."

"He looked at me and he said, 'Can it fly upside down for a little bit?' I said, 'Yeah a little bit, but eventually you're gonna lose lift in the wings and you won't have the power to keep the airplane up.'"

"It's hard to do and the planes aren't built for it," said another veteran commercial airline pilot. "But when you're in that situation you'll do anything you can to save the airplane," said the pilot, who asked not to be named because he's not authorized by his airline to speak with the news media.

When asked about flying upside down, Boeing, which inherited the MD-80 series after its 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas, issued a no-nonsense statement.

"The MD-80 cannot sustain inverted flight," the statement said. "The MD-80, as with all commercial airliners, was designed to fly upright. Commercial airliners are only tested and certified for upright flight."

Another thing that didn't ring true with Goodrich was the pilot leaving the cockpit during an emergency, as Washington's character did. Goodrich said he advised Zemeckis this scenario wasn't likely.

The interaction between Washington's character and the co-pilot rubbed commercial airline pilot and blogger Patrick Smith the wrong way.

"Washington's character is arrogant and flip and condescending and his co-pilot's character is meek and weak and at times even scared and clueless," said Smith. "This isn't how pilots behave. It reinforces the myth that the co-pilot is some sort of apprentice pilot."

The real deal

But as we all know, there's Hollywood -- and then there's the real deal.

As one commenter on airspacemag.com put it, "Hollywood could learn a lot from true life, i.e., United 232." That's because when it comes to a real life loss of airliner flight control, situations don't get much worse than Flight 232.

Al Haynes commanded the DC-10 that hot July day in 1989. The plane was about 75 miles north of Sioux City, Iowa, en route from Denver to Chicago with 11 crew and 285 passengers, when one of the plane's three engines failed. "There was a loud BANG," Haynes said. The bang, he said, "was followed by a large vibration lasting a few seconds."

There was a loud BANG.
Capt. Al Haynes, United Airlines Flight 232

The noise was the sound of a cracked engine fan disk shooting out of the tail engine and freakishly hitting in the worst possible spot. The disk severed all the plane's hydraulic lines, virtually cutting off all steering and speed control.

Read federal investigators' report on the crash (PDF)

For the next 45 minutes, Haynes, First Officer Bill Records, engineer Dudley Dvorak and instructor Dennis Fitch would need all their strength and good ideas to re-invent how to fly the DC-10.

But unlike the movie, flying upside down was not the solution to escaping this emergency.

"When the engine failed, the airplane started to turn to the right and started to roll," said Haynes. "If we had not stopped that and it had rolled over on its back, I'm sure the nose falling down would have increased the airspeed so fast that there's no way we could have controlled it."

"If we had gotten upside down, the party was over."

They learned how to steer the plane by adjusting the power in the aircraft's two remaining engines. It was like trying to drive a car without power steering, said Haynes, only harder.

The captain and Records struggled with the control wheel circling it steadily in right turn circles toward Sioux City airport. "It was very tiring," Haynes said. At the same time, Fitch struggled on his knees as he was forced to use both hands to muscle the plane's throttle levers, which also had become hard to move.

"I'll tell you what, we'll have a beer when this is all done," Fitch told Haynes, according to the flight recorder transcript. "Well, I don't drink," the captain replied, "but I'll sure as hell have one."

In the cabin, flight attendants worked to calm passengers and prepare them for a crash landing. "One passenger thought she was having a heart attack and the flight attendants calmed her down, and it turned out she wasn't having a heart attack, she was just very nervous," Haynes said.

As the plane neared the ground at a much-too-fast speed, passengers were warned to brace for impact. Video of the DC-10's fiery cartwheel landing was plastered across TV news channels for months after the disaster.

"The minute we hit the ground, I was knocked out," Haynes recalls. "I woke up in the cockpit talking to Dudley, I only remember bits and pieces of the conversation. I remember when the rescuers found us, someone asked, 'Are there really four of you in there?'"

One-hundred-ten passengers and one crew member -- flight attendant Rene Le Beau -- died in the crash. One-hundred-eighty-five passengers and crew survived.

In the months after the disaster, authorities recreated the emergency in flight simulators. But the simulator pilots were unable to maintain control of the plane all the way through to landing.

Sometimes life produces real events that rival Hollywood's wildest imaginations. That's what happened in 1989, when the crew of United Airlines Flight 232 achieved the nearly impossible.

The Largest Submarine in The U.S. Navy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxB11eAl-YE

World's largest airliner: Is bigger better?

An Airbus A380 flown by Korean Airlines arrives at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Friday to a spectacular water cannon salute. The airport held a ceremony to welcome the world's largest airliner, which began nonstop service between Atlanta and Seoul this week.

Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- Superjumbo, the world's largest passenger plane, has finally conquered the world's busiest airport.

Korean Air kicked off its double-decker Airbus A380 service this week from Seoul to Atlanta, which celebrated Friday with a spectacular ceremony.

Shortly after touching down, Flight 035 slowly taxied to its specially modified gate under a towering arch of water cannons. Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport, which handled some 95 million passengers last year, is now the seventh U.S. airfield able to handle this ginormous aircraft.

But nearly six years after the Superjumbo entered service, it's unclear whether bigger is necessarily better.

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Atlanta's airport spent about $30 million in passenger fees for runway, taxiway and jetway modifications, which enabled Bumshick Ehm -- one of Flight 035's approximately 350 passengers -- to easily exit the aircraft after a 13-hour, 7,100-mile nonstop journey.

Vine video of the Korean Airlines A380 taking off Friday

Ehm was returning home to Atlanta with his 3-year-old daughter after visiting family in Seoul. "Inside, when you're flying, it really doesn't feel that different from any other plane," said Ehm, 33. "But when you see it from the outside, you're reminded how huge it is."

More floor space and quieter engines

Air travel is projected to explode in the coming decades. Airlines are looking to freshen their fleets, while aircraft makers are pitching their new planes as the wave of the future. The A380 boasts quieter engines and lightweight construction to save fuel. And it's roomy -- with 50% more floor space than its competitor, the relatively new Boeing 747-8, which seats 400 to 500 passengers.

#ATL24: Behind the scenes at the world's busiest airport

More than four decades after the original 747 Jumbo Jet, it's hard for any giant airliner to avoid comparisons to the enormously successful icon.

Korean Air has taken some of the Superjumbo's floor space and created a "Celestial Bar" lounge hosted by a bartender. Also aboard is a "duty-free showcase" where passengers can shop for cosmetics, perfumes, liquor and accessories. Upstairs, they can find luxurious Kosmo First Class suites and lie-flat sleepers spaced 6 feet apart.

First class takes up the forward part of the lower floor with economy filling up the rear. Upstairs, it's all business class, offering comfy seating but less privacy. "The cabin is really modern," Ehm said. "I liked the duty-free shop, and the lounge made me feel like a VIP."

A cruise liner in the sky

"The reality is that if you're on the upper deck, you don't know there's another deck below you," says Brett Snyder ofCrankyflier.com.  "And if you're on the lower deck, it's like sitting on a 747."

Superjumbo by the Numbers 



2: Floors from front to back 


2: Basketball courts that can fit on each wing 

4: Engines 

16: Passenger doors 


22: Number of wheels 


50% more floor space than any other airliner 


81 feet (24.9 meters): Height 


220: Number of windows 


238 feet (72.72 meters):Length 


261 feet (79.75 meters): Wing span 


619 tons (562 tonnes):Weight 


9,755 miles (15,700 km):Range 

Sources: Korean Air, Airbus 

In 2007, at the A380's American coming out party at New York's JFK airport, the plane was compared to a cruise liner in the sky.

But the A380's reputation hit a rough spot in 2011 when a taxiing Air France Superjumbo clipped a smaller plane at JFK so hard it turned it 45 degrees.

Clearly Boeing didn't think bigger is always better. In the 1990s Boeing briefly partnered with Airbus to collaborate on a new wide-body four-engine airliner before backing out.

Instead, Boeing chose to build on its previous success. The newest version of the 747 -- the 747-8 entered service in 2011 with room for 51 extra passengers than its previous version -- falls short of A380's capacity, although it is longer.

Boeing's new 747 warmed the hearts of countless aviation geeks who still crush on the plane's distinctive front bulge. And it's not just geeks who like it. A recent poll of 1,000 fliers by airfarewatchdog.com showed Boeing's 777 and 747 beating out the A380.

Both Boeing and Airbus have suffered through mechanical problems with new aircraft -- the A380 with wing cracks and the 787 Dreamliner with overheating batteries.

Seven U.S. airports can land the A380

Nonetheless, after two years in business, Boeing's 747-8 has received more than 100 orders. Snyder points out that Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, which seats up to 300 and has been in service for two years, has surpassed 900 orders. Compare that to the A380, which has been in service six years and has yet to crack 300.

So now Atlanta joins six other American cities where travelers can fly the A380: Miami, Houston, New York's JFK, Washington's Dulles, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Is the A380 opening new routes? Not really, says Snyder, although the Superjumbo has "enabled airlines like Emirates to put more seats on existing routes at a lower cost."

The 787, however, is opening new routes that traditionally haven't worked because of cost issues or range limits, he says, includingUnited's from San Francisco to Chengdu, China.  Or British Airways' from Austin, Texas, to London.

In the end, which will dominate long-distance flight? Will we regularly soar above the clouds in four-engined, double-decker hotels? Or will travelers prefer single-floor planes with two engines and fewer perks?

For Ehm and his daughter as they come to the end of their trans-Pacific journey, that's not really at the top of their agenda. They're just glad to be home.

Wow! Making planes in the world's biggest building

verett, Washington (CNN) -- Sprawled out before us sits the exterior of the world's biggest building by volume. They make airliners here. Big ones.

"Let's go see some airplanes!" says our Boeing VIP tour guide.

I remind myself: This doesn't happen very often.

Yeah yeah yeah, Boeing offers public tours of this 98.3-acre airliner factory north of Seattle every day. This ain't that. This is special.

As part of a convention of aviation fans called Aviation Geek Fest, we're gaining ultra-exclusive access to the factory FLOOR. The public tour is limited to the balcony. We're about to walk knee-deep where Boeing gives birth to some of the world's biggest and most advanced airliners, including the 747-8 Intercontinental, the 777 Worldliner and the 787 Dreamliner.

Hot damn.

But not so fast -- before we go inside, Boeing has laid down some rules: no photos, no video, for our eyes only.

Here's a painful development: Our smartphones have been confiscated. Gulp. I'm already suffering from phantom phone pangs.

Plane stuck at airport

We enter through a small, inconspicuous door marked S-1. Suddenly, we're surrounded by partly assembled airliners in a room so big it takes on the feeling of an entire world. In some spots, we gaze across an unobstructed view measuring a quarter-mile.

This building is so flippin' big that -- years ago -- it created its own inside weather patterns, including vapor clouds. They eliminated that by installing a special ventilation system. Today's factory forecast: avgeeking, with continued avgeeking and a favorable chance of avgeeking later in the day.

IF YOU GO ... 


-Obtain tickets and tour buses at Future of Flight Museum adjacent to factory 



-Warning: the tour involves a one-third mile walk, 21 steep stairs and an elevator, but physcially challenged visitors can participate with advance notice. Tours last 90 minutes. 


-No photos or videos will be allowed during the tour. 



-Children allowed on the tour must be at least 4 feet tall; no babies allowed; no child care facilities available. 



-Open seven days a week, except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day 



Source: Boeing

Here are a few cool tidbits:

Jaw-dropping perspective

The thrill of being so close to the planes literally stops you in your tracks. Seemingly everywhere you look there's another five- or six-story-tall airplane towering over you. Some are covered with a green, protective temporary coating. One Dreamliner tail is painted with the familiar British Airways red, white and blue. Another sports New Zealand Air's cool black-and-white.

Boeing paints the tails before they're attached to the planes. Then they carefully adjust the tails for balance. Paint adds hundreds of pounds of weight, which would ruin the plane's balance if the tails were painted after being attached.

Soon these behemoths will jet across vast oceans as they carry travelers to far-flung destinations.

'You've gotta have secret clearance'

The planes' huge fuselages are joined together with the help of a giant piece of equipment called a "saddle." This U-shaped metal cage straddles the top of the planes during the body-joining process.

The "Wing Build" area -- where workers attach wings to the planes -- is the loudest part of the entire facility. The staccato of rivet guns pierces the heavy air. Whooshing vacuums suck up any dust that may be created when workers drill into the planes' lightweight carbon composite material.

Security concerns in the plant are real. "Conversation-restricted area," says one sign.

As we walk past a fenced-off zone, our guide quips, "You've gotta have secret clearance. I can't even go in there!"

The rock star engine

Then, like a holy relic brought back from the Crusades -- Boeing lets us touch "it."

A GE90-115B jet engine dwarfs a Boeing worker. Guinness calls it the most powerful commercially produced jet engine in the world.

By "it" we mean the GE90-115B. Guinness calls it the most powerful commercially produced jet engine in the world.

We gather around this rock star engine like thirsty travelers at a desert oasis, each taking turns running our hands across its silver exterior. The lip of the engine's mouth feels rough, like it has countless scratches etched into it. That design, engineers discovered, helps reduce noise.

This 19,000-pound monster hangs from the wing of a giant 777, but the engine still looks humongous -- measuring more than 11 feet in diameter. In fact, Boeing says it's so big you could fit the body of a 737 airliner inside it.

"There's no way to sense the sheer size of an airplane without being right there underneath it," says NYCAviation.com contributor Ben Granucci, enjoying his first Aviation Geek Fest. Engines like this make it possible for wide-body planes to fly long-distance routes nonstop with only two engines instead of three or four. In fact, the 777 flies many of the world's longest nonstop routes. In 2005 it set the world distance record for a nonstop commercial airline flight, jetting 13,423 miles from Hong Kong eastbound to London in 22 hours, 22 minutes.

The world's top flying hauler

Just a few hours earlier, a handful of aviation geeks were hanging out at a hotel next to Paine Field, the airport Boeing uses to test and deliver the factory's planes.

Then, Granucci tweeted out that the plane that hauls the most cargo by volume in the world just happened to be passing through.

MOST SHOCKING Plane Crashes Caught On Camera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlNoza8oAZw

Top Somali anti-terrorism officer shot dead in Mogadishu

MOGADISHU, Somalia (CNN) -- Al-Shabaab militants on Saturday shot dead the deputy chief of Somalia's anti-terrorism unit, Mohamed Qanuni, in a drive-by shooting in Mogadishu, police said.

Al-Shabaab military operation spokesman Abdiaziz Abu Musab claimed that militants blocked Qanuni's vehicle with their vehicle at Km5 Junction, spraying it with bullets before escaping from the scene.

"Today, We gunned down the new deputy head of Somalia's Anti-Terrorism Unit Mohamed Qanuni, along (with) other top official in broad daylight drive-by shooting in Mogadishu our fighters," Abu Musab said in a statement posted on a pro-Al-Shabaab website and on Radio Al Andalus.

"This will be the beginning of our attacks in Mogadishu targeting (government) personnel in a revenge of Godane's murder," he said, referring to Ahmed Godane, the former Al-Shabaab leader recently killed by a U.S airstrike in south Somalia.

Somali police Commissioner Gen. Mohamed Hassan Ismail confirmed to CNN that Qanuni and a fellow officer were killed by Al-Shabaab militants while driving in the Km5 area on Saturday around noon.

Last July, Ibrahim Ahmed Farah, who was Qanuni's predecessor, was killed in a similar drive-by-shooting in Mogadishu by Al-Shabaab militants.