Airlines at the movies

Since the start of commercial aviation, many airlines have used advertising in movies as a way of glamourising themselves and attracting business.

If no airline has paid the producer's fees in order to feature in the movie, a producer will either use a pretend airline name, film aircraft landing or departing, possibly without revealing the plane's livery, or only use interior cabin or cockpit views. When an airline has paid to be advertised, its name will be prominently shown during appropriate parts of the movie.

Among the airlines seen prominently on different movies are:

• Aerolineas Argentinas (on many Jorge Porcel movies)
• Aeromexico (on many Mexican movies)
• Air France (on Kiss of the Dragon and Airport '79 : The Concorde although the livery was changed for Airport 79. However you can tell the plane is from Air France. At the beginning of the movie the Concorde is being delivered from Paris to the new owners in the USA. Also, in one scene the registration F-BTSC can cleary be seen on the tail.)
• Air Panama (on a movie starring famous Venezuelan music group Los Chamos)
• America West (on When a Man Loves a Woman. Andy Garcia played an America West pilot)
• American Airlines (on Home Alone, Home Alone 2, Passport To Paris, How Stella Got Her Groove Back and High Crimes)
• British Airways (in GoldenEye, The Parent Trap, A Fish Called Wanda, Mission Impossible and Die Another Day)
• Delta Airlines (in Deception)
• Eastern Airlines (on Ernest Saves Christmas, Una Aventura LLamada Menudo and Almost Famous, although the airline's planes being shown on Almost Famous cannot be considered successful advertising since by the release date Eastern were bankrupt)
• Hawaiian Airlines (on The Brady Bunch movie part 2)
• Horizon Air (on Georgia)
• Hughes Airwest (on The Gauntlet)
• Lufthansa (on XXX, The Lizzie McGuire Movie)
• Mexicana (on The Mexican)
• Northwest Airlines (on Bridget Jones' Diary, Deception)
• Oceanair (on Coneccion Caribe)
• Olympic Airways (on Summer of Love)
• Pan Am (on many movies, including a Jorge Porcel one and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)
• Qantas (on a movie starring The Olsen Twins)
• TWA (on Rocky III, Rocky IV, Woman In Red,Funny Face, Back to The Beach, Dumb and Dumber, Great Balls of Fire and Salsa)
• Tower Air (on Turbulence, Liar, Liar)
• United Airlines (on Karate Kid 2 and Sister Sister)
• Virgin Atlantic (on Wayne's World and Austin Powers 2)
• Western Airlines (on Commando)

If the film script requires an aircraft to crash or explode, there is less likelihood that a real airline will want to be associated with it and a fictitious name, livery and airline call sign are most likely employed. Ideally if models are used they should bear some resemblance to the actual aircraft.

In cheaper or less professionally directed films it is common to see characters depart in one type of airliner and arrive in another, or to depart and arrive at the same airport, even though the script implies that they are travelling elsewhere. Low budget films will often exhibit a discontinuity between the aircraft seen and the soundtrack heard, as producers simplistically assume that all jets sound the same. There is therefore something to be said for arranging for an authorised period of satisfactory filming. Unfortunately a film can soon look dated if a real airline features prominently, because that airline may collapse, change its livery or merge with another. One notable example of this was 2001: A Space Odyssey which contained references to Pan Am spaceflights, although the actual Pan Am went bankrupt in the 1990's. Perhaps that is why landings and departures are often filmed from a position near to the centreline of a runway, which makes the external livery of the aircraft less obvious to the audience.