Location Analysis from 2000's "Cast Away" Plane Crash (2024)

The Robert Zemeckis-directed 2000 movie, “Cast Away” with Tom Hanks is a classic. It takes a relatively simple concept: a plane crash leaves a man stranded on an island for years to see what happens to him, and makes much of the classical idea of man versus nature.

The movie lets you watch the transformation of Hanks’s character, Chuck Noland, from a pudgy guy always on a clock, to a very lean survivor who becomes more appreciative of timeless eternal things. Over time, you appreciate that the movie is about man versus himself while on the surface being about his battle against an unforgiving island nature.

Oh and the movie’s really about the heavily-implied infidelity of Kelly, cheating on him with Dr. Spaulding the entire time, but that’s another issue.

And I want to like Tom Hanks, I really do. He’s in a series of classic movies. He’s always portraying generally good guys. He doesn’t exude degeneracy. But then you hear about the Isaac Kappy allegations, the weirdo culty stuff he does with Oprah, and his far-left statements and… he just seems like, at best, that he’s a weirdo.

Anyway, this is all a pretense just for me to dig into obscure details about “Cast Away.”

These weird esoteric deep dives into movies aren’t motivated by ideology, well they aren’t solely motivated by ideology, okay fine but they’re about something else too: these deep dives are unpacking and dissecting the romanticism I, and many others, have for these flawed tales.

Others try to get in on this work, but they usually disappoint. The most prominent is probably “CinemaSins” which takes a work and identifies all the obvious flaws. But they do a horrible job. I just really hate CinemaSins. They said there were 87 problems with Cast Away, and I don’t think any of them overlap my list here, for whatever that’s worth.

In this irrational society we’d all be better served with more skepticism and more criticism.

As a general statement about cinema in general, these stories were always flawed. They were flawed in their inception through their execution. They capture and amplify subversive Hollywood values seeking to, often, undermine stable and sustainable society.

On the surface, Cast Away is a fun tale with some things to think about. On a slightly deeper level, it inculcates in men a belief that nature is hostile and community is paramount. Young men once spent their entire lives in seminaries in the mountains, but one modern man can barely survive on an island? It promotes an obsession about women who don’t reciprocate those advances. The movie says eschew career and follow the currents of life and appreciate where it takes you.

Which, while there is some wisdom there, is also a recipe for complacency.

While these themes might seem minor, their presentation in a movie marketed primarily to men ought to be a concern.

The problem is that movies transmit and amplify values. Everything on the screen is there for a purpose, and those who put it there for you to see put it there with a specific purpose in mind. There’s nothing that accidentally ends up in a modern movie.

Dissecting these movies and highlighting their flaws and factual errors empowers others to easily deconstruct these flawed cinematic constructions, greasing the wheels of criticism.

I don’t have the time and I doubt you have the patience, for a dissection of the entire movie. So I’m going to focus on what I consider the best scene in the movie, the plane crash.

I’m going to give you a lot of very nitpicky details about the movie. Buckle up.

So here’s the primary clip in question, the “Plane Crash” scene from “Cast Away”:

Now, sure, a movie is a movie. It’s fiction. It’s not meant to be real.

Obviously I am not trying to say where the real place existed, because there is no such place.

But if we were to try and reconcile and resolve the fictional portrayal with the real-world global geography, where would it be?

Can the incongruent and incoherent details be, at all possibly, reconciled?

The movie provides scant details, but enough to offer an interesting case.

I was surprised that this question was not more thoroughly answered online. Most answers were either “it’s fiction!” or “the Cook Islands” - but of course neither answers the questions of where the plane would have crashed, and where the known traits of that region of the world suggest the events would have happened if they were real.

The movie itself was filmed on the 100-acre Monuriki Island in the Fiji Chain in the South Pacific.

The Fiji Island chain has been inhabited for the last 3,500 years. 87% of the population lives on the main island, but 100 of its islands are inhabited and the other 230 are not.

Most of the islands are within eyesight of one another. This is because they are typically formed from volcanic activity. It’s rare to find an uninhabited island, by itself, not within eyesight of other islands or as part of an island chain. The average person can generally see 2.8 miles in any direction at sea level. The highest spot on Monuriki is 584 feet high, so you can see roughly 29.6 miles away.

In fact, not only is Monuriki within sight of another island, it’s easily within sight of multiple nearby islands. It’s about a three-mile swim from the 4-star Matamanoa Island Resort.

It kind of kills the movie to know that from the famous Tom Hanks beach, you can clearly see multiple nearby islands.

So, the island that the movie was filmed on is clearly within eyesight of other islands that include a lot of amenities.

That’s one layer of analysis, but what about what the movie presents to us as the fictional island. What does the movie make claim upon as to what it claims is the in-movie truth as opposed to the real location details?

Let’s talk about the mythos from within the movie.

THE BASIC FACTS OF WHAT THE MOVIE PROVIDES TO THE VIEWER:

1. Date and Basic Flight Path.
   This was a Christmas Day 1995 flight from Memphis to Malaysia.

2. The featured planes are an Airbus A300F4-605R and a McDonnell Douglas-11
   The movie shows protagonist Chuck Noland walk towards a Airbus A300F4-605R of FedEx Express operating Flight 88. But it then later shows the co*ckpit of a FedEx MD-11. The internet sleuths have figured out that when Noland gets on the plane, he’s walking near an A300, but internally on the plane, he’s on an MD-11. An A300 could not have made the flight across the Pacific because it has a much shorter 4,000 mile range, compared to the MD-11’s 6,800 mile range. So, he’s on an MD-11.

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This is what the Airbus’ co*ckpit looks like this:

Here’s what an MD-11 co*ckpit looks like, note the six horizontal square navigation display screens:

The co*ckpit in the movie, showing six horizontal navigation displays, showing that Noland is on an MD-11 and not an Airbus 300F4-605R:

Also there’s a third engine on the tail on the MD-11, below, and not on the Airbus 300-F4, featured above with only two engines. The movie’s plane in-flight has three engines, again showing that they were flying on an MD-11.

So maybe that doesn’t mean much, but it’s airplane p*rn for a small, select, group of people.

3. The Spoken Position In-Movie Prior to the Crash.
   The Navigator Reports their Position to “Tahiti Control” as “Jenna at 1526… at 1620, Eric is next…”

Tahiti, for reference, is near the Cook Islands. The Cook Islands are south of the equator. The words “Jenna” and “Eric” are navigation waypoints that assist pilots in maintaining a flight path.

The Cook Islands are 3,000 miles almost due south from Hawaii. Tahiti, also known as French Polynesia, is southeast from Hawaii.

4. The internals of the plane show it to be an MD-11

As mentioned above. An MD-11 plane has a ceiling altitude of 43,000 feet, a cruising speed of 551 mph, and a maximum range of 6,840 miles.

5. The fuel is reported at 95.5% right before the crash.

During the clip the pilot reports that fuel is at 95.5%. The fuel capacity on an MD-11 is 38,615 gallons. So, 95.5% of that amount would be 36,877 gallons. Meaning that, fully fueled, it has burned 1,738 gallons so far on its flight. The MD-11 has a normal consumption rate of 2,120 gallons per hour, so they’re 49 minutes into flight. At a cruising speed, they’re 450 miles at most away from where they took off.

6. The Pilots Mention they diverted their flight path 200 Miles South to Evade the Storm

6. Kelly in the movie, played by Helen Hunt, mentions that Chuck’s island is 600 miles south of the Cook Islands.

6. Kelly also mentions that Chuck drifted 500 miles before being picked up.

7. It can be inferred that the original flight path was 200 miles north of Chuck’s island, so that would make the original path 400 miles south of the Cook Islands.

8. The Plane was heading Due West, heading 270, Prior to Crashing.

The plane was heading due west, as indicated on the Nav Display. At the top of the heading you can see that the course heading is 270 degrees, which is due west.

On the right, you are looking at the MD-11 Engine and Alert display. What it’s showing is that the N1 and N2, which reflect the percentage of the rotor speed capacity on each engine, is at 95% except for N2. EGT represents the temperature at the engine’s exhaust, which helps maintain reliability on the engine’s performance over time.

9. The Movie Provides Nonsense Coordinates on a Map

Briefly you can see the coordinates N19°, W164° on screen for where the flight path took place. The map is pretty unclear otherwise. This location provided on the map in the movie gives coordinates close to Hawaii.

By contrast, the Cook Islands are at the coordinates 21.2367° S, 159.7777° W.

ADDITIONAL FACTS TO AID THE ANALYSIS:

10. The average ‘drift speed’ of the Pacific is 2.5mph, so it would take 200 hours (8.3 days) to go 500 miles. If you were anywhere near the Cook Islands, you would be drifting west.

11. There’s basically no way to go west from South America to Malaysia. Modern flight tracking shows that almost all flights route through Hawaii or go from Los Angeles southwest.

12. If you were on an island 600 miles south of the Cook Islands, and following known ocean currents drifting west for 500 miles, you would still be a long way from land.

13. The known shipping lanes, as of 2015, in the South Pacific, suggest drifting into the known lanes would probably have taken longer than as portrayed.

14. The most likely flight in an MD-11 would be from Memphis to Honolulu, to Indonesia, with a break somewhere between Hawaii and Indonesia.

Since the operating range of the MD-11 is about 7,000 miles, it makes sense to break up the flight of 11,000 miles by stopping in Hawaii if there was a direct flight, which is unlikely but it is a commercial flight.

That range also means that if the plane ditched about 600 miles south of the Cook Islands, it should have had and reported a fuel status below 50%.

15. The Fuel Gauges as Displayed and Spoken, at 95.5%, Along with the Statement about Being 200 Miles Off-Course, Still Puts the Plane’s Crash Close to Hawaii

Assuming a stopover in Honolulu, here’s the basic flight path, below:

200 miles south of the intended course, while only having consumed 4.5% of their fuel, puts them 450 miles away, crashing around here vis a vis Hawaii:

Somewhat amusingly, this is also the likely crash radius and location of Gilligan’s Island.

16. If the crash had happened near Hawaii, there’s a decent chance the currents would have washed Noland ashore in Oahu.

Based on the known ocean currents around Hawaii, there’s a 50/50 chance the wreckage would have been pushed back to Hawaii. This map of ocean currents around Hawaii demonstrates the directions of the current:

Obviously that would not be nearly as interesting of a movie if it were filmed that way.

ANALYSIS: PROBLEMS WITH THE MOVIE’S DEPICTION

1. The Flight Path is Nonsense.
   All departures from Memphis (MEM) go through Anchorage (ANC) first. So the flight would be from ANC-Malaysia. This flight path would take it nowhere near Hawaii or the South Pacific.

2. No “Tahiti Control” Would be in Contact, that’s the wrong FIR
   There’s no way the plane would be heading due west near Tahiti or the Cook Islands, as indicated by their headings.

In fact, if they had stopped for refueling in Hawaii, it also makes no sense that Tahiti would be in their flightpath, since Tahiti is actually southeast of Hawaii, and nowhere near the path to Malaysia.

Now, you might be thinking, “well, they’re just talking to Tahiti, so they could be a long way away…”

Nope! The Tahiti FIR, known as Flight Information Region, covers a unique region of the Pacific that makes even less sense for a route from Memphis to Malaysia.

Here’s a map of the Tahiti FIR:

The region is southeast of Hawaii, you can see Tahiti’s part of the world here, and why the plane would only have been in contact with Oakland Oceanic, not Tahiti Control:

3. Kelly’s Stated Location for Chuck’s Island Means the Plane Should have been in touch with Auckland FIR, not Tahiti FIR.
   Kelly tells Chuck that his island was 600 miles south of the Cook Islands. She mentions he was picked up around the Cook Islands. In the movie, you can hear the pilot reporting his position to Tahiti FIR as “Tahiti Control.” The technical consultant claims that the pilots were ditching in the water near the island in question, so again that would put them hundreds of miles south of the Cook chain. But if you were 600 miles south of the Cook Islands, you’d be in a different FIR than Tahiti, you’d be in the Auckland FIR so you’d be communicating with Auckland Control.

4. Once they Approached the Equator, the Storm Should have Subsided due to the Coriolis Force

So on the 3,600 mile trek southward from Hawaii to the Cook Islands, the storm they were working to get around would have dissipated around the Equator. The reason for this is called the Coriolis Force, which causes the Northern and Southern hemisphere to have completely different airflows and weather patterns. Here’s a restatement of the TLDR: “Observations show that no hurricanes form within 5 degrees latitude of the equator.”

Meaning that, because of the rotation of the Earth, the equator is a place of relative weather calm. There would be no need to divert hundreds of miles further south out of the Northern hemisphere into the Southern hemisphere in order to avoid a storm.

5. The “Jenna” Waypoint is Wrong, it’s near Shreveport, Louisiana

As part of Tahiti Control, as well, every FIR has a series of ‘named waypoints’ that assist pilots with knowing where they’re at in their journey.

You can see the waypoint named “JENNA” on the Nav Display in the scene, in purple, near the top right of the screenshot:

The Nav Display is clear that’s the nearest waypoint, the one that’s coming up next.

This is also featured elsewhere, again showing the “Jenna” waypoint.

I couldn’t identify the other two waypoints at the top, but the bottom one is definitely “Jenna.”

The Jenna waypoint is even briefly featured on the map that they display on screen.

Tahiti FIR has no waypoint named “Jenna.”

There is a “Jenna” waypoint, but it’s in Louisiana 30 miles east of Shreveport.

This mistake is baked into the script as well, when the pilot relays their last position as “Jenna at 1526… at 1620, Eric is next…”

6. Their Nav Display is Displaying that they’re heading in the Wrong Direction

The Nav Display says they are heading due west, heading 270. But in the movie they claim they’re heading south or southwest in order to go around the storm.

But if they are diverting south, it makes no sense that they’re showing that they’re heading due west.

If there’s a major storm, heading due west wouldn’t make any sense if you’d previously been diverting to go around it.

It’s also not consistent with their claimed flightpath, shown above, which is heading at a generally West/Southwest direction.

7. There’s no Pacific Island 600 Miles South of the Cook Islands

There’s very little around the area. The movie’s writers have long-claimed to have made the island up out of whole cloth, so their admission should obviate their guilt here.

8. The Ocean’s Currents Wouldn’t Push Noland the Right Direction

9. Pacific Flights Rarely Go Near the Cook Islands

As noted before, Pacific flight almost never traverse this part of the world. It’s simply too far out of the way of any air routes.

10. The Pacific Shipping Lanes Don’t Typically go Past the Cook Islands

As noted above.

11. FedEx could have Tracked the Signal Pings from the Plane

The crash was in 1995, but even then signals would have been coming off of the plane that would have given various governments an indication of where the plane went down. Even though the Malaysian airliner MH370 went dark before disappearing in 2014, various governments always had a general idea of where the plane was alleged to have gone down.

The screenwriter was on Quora trying to claim that the plot device of the ‘storm’s electrical interference’ with the airplane accounts for the lack of any signals getting through.

12. A bonus unrelated to the crash scene: The Sun Casts Different Shadows on Chuck as he’s being Rescued.

So Chuck should be drifting westward at 2.5mph. He’s being passed by a cargo ship that’s headed due East. The sun on Chuck’s face as he lays there is coming from an easterly direction, suggesting that it’s the morning. When he gets up and reaches for the ship, the source of the light becomes sourced from a distinctly more westernly direction.

Here’s the image from the first, where you can see the source of light is coming from the east, where a reflective glare is on his shoulder and forehead, and shadows are around his armpit and eyes:

Here’s the image from above, where you can see the source of light is now coming from the west, where shadows are being left on the left side of his face, and shadows are coming off his fingers indicating where the source of light has moved:

So anyway, there’s likely more, but I haven’t seen these problems identified anywhere, and it obviously creates a result where the island is just fiction and fantasy. Not only could it not exist, it could only exist in several different places. There’s no clear stand-in for the fictional movie island.

The crash itself has a wide variety of problems associated with it, some of which I mentioned.

The screenwriting technical advisor claimed on the Quora website that he directed the screenwriter to include certain details about ditching upwind of the mystery island after repeatedly diverting south to avoid an El Nino-type storm event.

This also makes very little sense, because El Nino does not occur on a flight path that makes sense for the film. The center of El Nino activity is far south of Hawaii, which means that for the pilot to keep diverting south to avoid El Nino makes one wonder why they were that far south to begin with.

If you want a resolution to the open question, it’s likely that they were where Kelly said they were at. That’s the answer with the most in-movie credibility since the various instruments could have been wrong.

If we’re trying to retcon explanations for plot holes like we’re in a Star Trek writing room, then perhaps all the instrument and navigation errors were part and parcel of the magical electrical cloud from the thunderstorm. They were struck by electricity and their fuel gauge was off, their location was off, and they flew due south through clear skies over the equator because reasons.

It’s the one catch-all excuse that gets them out of the various other movie errors and incongruities.

It’s one scene, one crash, but as you can see the location analysis leaves a lot to be desired. It would have been better to in-movie an explanation as to why they were flying across the South Pacific. One sentence could have solved all their problems here.

The movie needed a few contrivances. It needed an innocent plane crash even though modern planes are remarkably adept at avoiding such events.

William Broyles Jr., the screenwriter for the movie, has his papers at Texas State in San Marcos, Texas.