Page 12 - July 2023

The King Air 200 fuselage prop on set during filming of the movie “On a Wing and a Prayer.” Scroggins said that although it was built specifically for this particular movie, that it will continue to work in the film and television industry.
company that does that, though this was the first time he ever had tried it with a King Air. We put N143DE down in the shop at the airport where we did all the filming, Fulton County Airport, because once we applied the shrink wrap we would have an FAA waiver in place that limited us to flying within 30 miles. The shrink wrap worked out really nice. When you look at the photos you have no idea that’s just plastic stuck on the airplane. We didn’t lose any of it in the filming, and when they were all done it just peeled right off.”
That King Air has since had two new engines installed and next will get an avionics upgrade, Maire said. “The plane is about as basic as they get but it is a solid airplane and our most reliable King Air,” he said. “We all love flying it, it’s a really nice airplane.”
For the movie crew to film various shots, they asked Atlanta Air Charter to have the aircraft on set for five days, during which Maire said he flew about 90 minutes including takeoffs, taxiing and three to four approaches.
10 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
To stay true to the event, they had Maire in the right seat dressed to look like Dennis Quaid and one of his fellow pilots from Atlanta Air Charter in the left seat dressed to look like Heather Graham, in case a glimpse of their head or body made it into the film (you’ll see Maire’s shoulder in several scenes when the aircraft in taxiing.)
“I had watched the actual footage of the real event, and I knew that the guy did a pretty decent job,” Maire said. “I was trying to be accurate. I wasn’t trying to
be dramatic. But the stunt coordinator wanted me to bring it down right in front of the camera, land on one wheel and make it look like an amateur was bringing the airplane in. They kept telling me to make it look rougher, so I was rocking and rolling and pitching up and down. That’s how I got the stunt pilot credit for the movie. In the end, they didn’t use my landings because of the CGI (computer-generated imagery) cost. They were going to have to block out all the stuff in the background ›
JULY 2023