Oceanic Airlines
Oceanic Airlines, and less frequently, Oceanic Airways, is the name of a fictional airline used in several films and television programs—typically works that feature plane crashes and other aviation disasters, with which a real airline would prefer not to be associated.[1] Columnist Daryna Tobey compared its prevalence to that of 555 telephone numbers on television.[2]
History
[edit]Oceanic Airlines first appeared in the 1965 two-part episode "The Ditching" of the television series Flipper.[1] It later appeared in the 1996 film Executive Decision, and footage of the Oceanic Airlines plane in that film was reused as stock footage for several works.[1][3] Appearances since include the 1996 film Executive Decision, the 2004–2010 television series Lost, the 2011 video game Dead Island, and a number of others.[1]
Ill-fated
[edit]The fictional airline typically appears in works that feature plane crashes and other aviation disasters, with which a real airline would prefer not to be associated.[1] In the 2004–2010 television series Lost, Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 crashes on an island in the Pacific Ocean.[1][2]
Actual aircraft
[edit]The actual aircraft used for most of the film Executive Decision was a Boeing 747-269B with the aircraft registration number N707CK. It was scrapped in 2004 after service with Ocean Airlines as S2-ADT.[4] The crash and ground scenes were filmed at Mojave Airport with a different aircraft, a retired Boeing 747-121. It stayed there retired after the filming, painted in Oceanic Airlines colors (with a dark hole painted on the fuselage), marked with the fake registration number N707CK;[citation needed] its actual registration numbers during service were N754PA, LX-FCV, and F-GIMJ.[4]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Rice, Evan S. (2017). "Don't Fly Oceanic". The Wayfarer's Handbook: A Field Guide for the Independent Traveler. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-316-27134-9.
- 1 2 Tobey, Daryna (27 July 2012). "25 favorite fictional companies". Fortune. Archived from the original on 2 July 2017.
References to Oceanic Airlines on television are almost as common as 555-prefixed phone numbers.
- ↑ Brew, Simon (4 October 2018). TV Geek: The Den of Geek Guide for the Netflix Generation. Octopus. ISBN 978-1-78840-139-5.
In Diagnosis: Murder's 1997 episode "Murder in the Air", external shots of a passenger plane are actually pieces of stock footage from the 1996 movie thriller Executive Decision. Indeed, Executive Decision's Oceanic Airlines Flight 343 has shown up in several TV shows, from the 2004 mini-series Category 6: Day of Destruction to the legal drama JAG.
- 1 2 Simon D. Beck, The Aircraft-Spotter's Film and Television Companion p.81
Further reading
[edit]- Nudd, Tim (18 November 2004). "Oceanic's unfriendly skies". Adweek. Archived from the original on 8 December 2018. Retrieved 12 April 2025.
- Morago, Greg (21 July 2005). "Hollywood's Flight Frights: The Bombs Are Back: Now It's Safe to Scare in the Air". Hartford Courant. Retrieved 12 April 2025.
- Lambie, Ryan (23 November 2013). "The 10 unluckiest fictional airlines in cinema". Den of Geek. Archived from the original on 25 November 2013.
External links
[edit]- A fake Oceanic Airlines webpage with an announcement of the discontinued service
