BOEING 747 - COLUMBIA AIRLINES

From the 1975 feature film AIRPORT 1975 directed by Jack Smight

Airport 1975 is a sequal to the smash-hit film ‘Airport’, and was part of the wave of disaster movies that flooded the box foffice in the early 1970s.

Airport was n excellent thriller, overflwoing with Hollywood glamour and thrills. Airport 1975 was a pale imitation. Instead of focusing the action on a busy airport, the plot involves a light plane going out of control and striking a Boeing 747 airliner, killing the pilots and one of flight attendants has to fly the plane! The plot is the stuff of parody nowadays but it is all ernestly played by Karen Black, Charlton Heston and others. The modestly budgeted film ($3m) was a massive success. (£50m!).  

This painting features the 747 flying at perilously low level through a mountain range. In the film you never see any exterior shots of the aircraft in flight with its damage visible: you only see it from the other side. This has always bothered me and while the risk of blowing the suspense with obviosuy vfx shots can apreciated, it always wreaked of low budget to me. So in this illustration I favoured the damaged side, but we are looking from so as to avoid seeing the damage!

The kit would not faeture the damage, this would be a regular 1144th scale 747 kit with decals for the fictitious Columbia Airlines.