'Legends of Flight' Celebrate in Washington Despite Crash-Landing at Start

It was set to be a triumphant arrival for the Imax 3-D film "Legends of Flight," which opens Wednesday at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. To celebrate the world premiere in Washington on Tuesday, seven Stearman biplanes -- wooden aircraft used to train pilots during World War II -- would descend into Reagan National Airport bearing journalists and film critics to see the movie on the National Mall.

It was 10:05 a.m., and I was mingling with the bleary-eyed travelers waiting for their flights in a handful of rocking chairs in front of windows overlooking DCA's main runway.

"What's that?" an older woman asked no one in particular.

Eight specks were visible on the horizon, drifting and diving like a small swarm of bees heading toward us from across the Potomac. Before I could finish reciting the day's agenda, the brightly painted Stearmans had come into sharper focus and were beginning to touch down on the runway.

Suddenly, a man cried out: "That one crashed!"

I looked up. He had been a joker a few minutes before, but now he was alarmed. Sure enough, a yellow plane lay upside down on the runway, its three wheels jutting toward the sky. Passengers lept from their seats and pressed their faces against the glass, aghast.

As airport employees gathered at the window too and emergency vehicles sped toward the crashed Stearman, we could see two people standing next to the plane. "They're saying nobody is hurt," an airport employee announced. (We would later learn that the pilot and his passenger, Washington Post transportation reporter Ashley Halsey, were not only unhurt, but Halsey managed to hold onto his video camera while the plane flipped over on its back, catching the entire episode on video.)

The mini-crash gave the group of witnesses at Reagan National a feeling of having been through a calamity together -- one, fortunately, that had ended well. But the day hardly needed a dramatic beginning to be momentous. A highly decorated crowd had gathered to celebrate the release of "Legends of Flight," directed by award-winning Imax auteur Stephen Low. Some were literally decorated: a group of former Trans World Airline stewardesses who worked aboard the Lockheed Super Constellation (the ladies affectionately call it the "Connie") in the 1940s and 50s wore their original pea-green uniforms and hats. Others were former military and commercial pilots, aviation enthusiasts, and employees of Boeing, around whose latest invention Lowe's film centers.

For the former pilots and stewardesses, coming to Washington to see the movie was a reunion. Several had met their future spouses working together on the Connie, and all had stories about the days when stepping foot on an airplane was a romantic adventure. Aboard a bus to the Air & Space Museum on the National Mall, they swapped memories of inter-airline parties, winning pins for flying a million miles, and their very first interviews that led to work in the airline industry, which in those days frowned on young women in romantic relationships.

"They would always ask, 'Are you engaged?' " a former TWA stewardess said with a laugh. Her heavily scuffed suitcase still wore a tag from New York's JFK airport, yellowed by the decades. "If you said no, they would say, 'Well, surely you have a boyfriend?' They would try to trick you into saying it. It was the same thing in five interviews."

"Legends of Flight" is in many ways a celebration of these men and women, who were pioneers of the sky. Mike Carriker, the chief test pilot for Boeing's much-heralded 787 Dreamliner, narrates much of the film in an awed tone as he recounts their collective accomplishments. For him, like many others in the theater, flight was and is about more than technology or travel. He is more likely to wax eloquent on the flight patterns of albatrosses and engine-less gliders -- both of which influenced the design of the Dreamliner -- than he is about scientific equations or air speeds.

"We can't make anything that can glide for 5,000 miles," Carriker said of the albatross's ability to remain airborne for months at a time. "We're not even close." He said he studies birds to remind him of the laws of nature and flies planes like the Connie and the Stearman to remain in touch with the simplicity of older aircraft designs.

In between dramatic shots of planes soaring above mountains and into sunsets, "Legends of Flight" focuses on Boeing's risky decision to bet its future on the success of the 787. Weaknesses in the computer-controlled wings caused the plane to be delayed nearly two years, but thousands of Boeing employees were on hand to see its maiden flight on Dec. 15, 2009. Director Low said he "dive-bombed" the jetliner in a helicopter in order to travel fast enough to film the 787 in flight.

In contrast to the 787's stately elegance, the Stearman in the film flew with wild abandon, skimming over the tops of trees and performing quick, tight loops through the air. I hoped my afternoon flight wouldn't be quite as theatrical.

I was partnered with Ron Gorr, a former US Airways pilot and military man who lives near Pittsburgh. Gorr purchased his Stearman in 2002. "I always wanted one from the moment I first flew one," he said.

Gorr's Stearman was built in 1942 and delivered to the military in December 1943. He found it in ruins close to a decade ago. On Tuesday, new fabric covered the wooden framework of its wings, and its fresh paint glistened in the sun. It bore a bright yellow "75" on each side, and each wing was emblazoned with the red, white and blue military markings Navy aircraft used during World War I.

Using the two handles carved into the plane's top wing, I hoisted myself into the black leather seat in the front cockpit; Gorr would fly the plane from the second cockpit directly behind me. My feet settled onto two slats on each side of the floor, and a wooden control stick jutted up between my knees. Ron help me don a headset that felt like it weighed 50 pounds and clamped like a vise around my skull. He pointed to a tiny red button on the instrument panel.

"Press that if you want to talk to me," he said. "But try not to talk to me when the tower is talking to me." I felt around the interior of the cockpit in vain for something to hold onto, pretty sure I would not be doing much talking.

Ron climbed in behind me and started the engine. It sputtered for a few seconds, and the propeller began to turn.

The Stearmans lined up, one by one, into a neat semi-circle facing the runway. They always seemed to pull into some formation or other, tightening their ranks each time they paused. A US Airways shuttle, no doubt headed for New York, rolled past our squadron, its narrow cockpit windows making it appear to be squinting suspiciously. The air traffic controllers babbled in my ears about "November" and "foxtrot."

"Is something going on with the Stearmans?" one asked.

"They were here for a movie, from what I understand."

"Roger."

The traffic controllers, whom I would have expected to know more than they ever wanted to about the biplanes after dealing with the flight delays caused by the morning crash, asked us to wait while they looked for our flight plan. Meanwhile, they instructed a departing plane to "yield to the incoming Airbus." That plane landed, followed by an American Airlines flight that received a scolding for taxiing too slowly. With a final warning to "beware of the turbulence from the previous arrival," the tower directed our formation onto Runway 1.

The Stearmans took to the air in pairs. Ron and I were in the second set, and as we hurtled down the runway, the plane tilted forward off its rear wheel. For the only time during the flight, I could see over the nose of the plane. The front wheels lifted off the tarmac, and the plane shifted from side to side, responding to every slight gust of wind.

"Stearmans, left and out," the air traffic controllers chirped. The pair of planes ahead turned instantly to the left as if they were voice-operated.

As we picked up speed and altitude, the airport began to resemble the drawing on the signs inside its terminals. Across the Beltway, you could see all five sides of the Pentagon at once. On the other side of the thin blue Potomac, Capitol Hill looked hardly a stone's throw away. The ascent was more comfortable than on most jetliners.

We turned "left and out," and headed out into the deep green of Virginia, the Blue Ridge mountains faintly visible on the horizon.