The Explosion of Flight 180: An In-Depth Fan Analysis

Volée Airlines Flight 180

    Thinking back on my first memory of the premonition sequence from Final Destination of the explosion of Volée Airlines Flight 180, I remember as a kid sneaking into the family room of my childhood home while my siblings and parents were watching the film. I did this often with a lot of horror films that my parents would watch (but wouldn’t let me watch), because I loved anything horror, even at a young age, and would take every opportunity to immerse myself in it, even if it meant staying up past my bedtime.
    The moment that this scene finished, and the film cuts to Alex freaking out on the plane, I found myself completely immersed in the film—more specifically, that particular scene. Something about it was forever imprinted in my mind, and I was never able to let it completely leave my memory.
    My obsession soon became even more satiated after I became more familiar with the premonition sequence of Final Destination than a normal human being probably should have.
    The following is a short analysis of the fictional explosion of Volée Airlines Flight 180 that killed 280 passengers on board from the film Final Destination and Final Destination 5. I have scanned through the premonition sequence of Final Destination frame-by-frame multiple times in order to observe as much detail as I possibly could, mostly by choice, but also as a mean to create this essay. This analysis will going into detail of the seating chart where Alex and the gang who get kicked off of the flight sat, and how Final Destination 5 inaccurately portrayed the section of the plane in which they sat (including Sam and Molly).
    It will also explore the explosion of Flight 180, including an in-depth analysis of the events of the explosion in the premonition sequence versus the real-life sequence and how the two events match together almost perfectly.
    In addition, this essay touches on the explosion’s trajectory and how it is different in both the premonition and in real-life. I will also go into detail on a very small subject of the dismembered leg seen when Flight 180 explodes and who it belongs to. Lastly, the essay will end with the inconsistencies noticed in both the real-life explosion sequence in Final Destination 5 and the premonition sequence of Final Destination.

The Seating Chart

    To begin, let’s take a look at the section of the plane where Alex and the students were assigned their seats.

    The students are seated just at the middle section of the plane where the wings are located. Initially, I had thought that the class sat at the back of the plane, but it seems that this is a more common misconception than I realized, which I will explain below.
    When the students board the plane and begin to make their way to their seats, there is a shot that shows a close-up (or, rather the POV of Alex) of the row numbers as he makes his way down the aisle toward his assigned seat. His is at row 25, seat I.

    So, if we look at a seating chart of a Boeing 747 (which I am assuming that this is the same model plane), it is noted that the section where the students sat is located where the wings are—in the middle of the plane.

Note: this is not the same exact plane as the one used in the movie, but it is the closest model that I could find in regards to seating

    This is a detail that could easily be forgotten, which is probably one of the reasons why I had always imagined that Alex sat at the back of the plane (the other reasons will be mentioned further down this analysis). However, it seems as though that I am not the only one to have this thought.
    In Final Destination 5, when we revisit Volée Airlines Flight 180, Sam and Molly’s seats are assigned to row 23 (a small goof within itself (it should be row 24 since they sit one row ahead of Alex’s initial seat), but let’s look past that).

    First, to digress, I want to quickly express my opinion on how they had executed this ‘full-circle’ approach to the Final Destination franchise. When I first saw this film, it came as a sweet surprise to see them visit the original Final Destination. But after watching the film a few more times, I became rather irked at the way that the ending of the fifth film played out in the means of Alex freaking out on the plane. How did Sam and Molly not hear Alex initially freaking out about the plane exploding? I understand that it happened that way because otherwise the two would have gotten off the plane themselves; I just would have approached it differently myself.
    My proposal: Sam and Molly are running late to catch their flight (and if they miss it, they avoid death once again! But Death won’t allow that to happen now, will it…). As they are running down the jet bridge to get onto the plane, they pass the group of students getting kicked off the plane, one of them screaming gibberish while another looks angry and ready to fight. Sam and Molly have the same dialogue as they do in the actual film (Molly: What was that all about? Sam: I don’t know…) and resume their business boarding the plane and seating themselves. Cue the scene playing out normally. Apart from the differences in the way that Flight 180 ends up exploding in Final Destination 5 (some details that I will cover as you continue reading), I wouldn’t change anything else about the ending except for the above suggestion.
    Okay, now that I got that off of my hairy chest…
    I am sure you know by now the goof that I am going to touch on in Final Destination 5 is in regards to the seating arrangement of Sam and Molly. You remember in the film that the two are supposed to be in the same section as Alex and the rest of the students so that they could witness the tail-end of the freakout. However, as I had mentioned above, the students were seated in the middle of the plane. When watching Final Destination 5, as the plane begins to go down, multiple exterior shots showed that the fuselage that had torn away (from Engine #1 exploding) was further toward the back of the plane than the section that the students were actually sitting in; to goof up even further, the hole that forms where Sam and Molly are sitting is at the very back of the plane, way off from where they’re actually supposed to be sitting.

The section where Sam and Molly are sitting looks a little too far back of the plane for it to be row 23, doesn’t it?

THE EXPLOSION OF FLIGHT 180

The Premonition Explosion vs The Real-Life Explosion

    Those who have watched the Final Destination films, at least more than once, have noticed that the initial catastrophes happen much quicker in real-time than they had in the premonitions. The pileup in Final Destination 2 happens at the on-ramp, rather than a couple miles up the highway and behind the tree line like the premonition suggested. In Final Destination 5, the bridge collapses within seconds compared to the 5-minute premonition. Even in Final Destination 3, the rollercoaster seems to derail at one of the first few sharp turns on the ride.
    After experimenting with the explosion of Flight 180 in Final Destination, I had noticed that the premonition and the real-time scenes match up almost perfectly. I’ve gone ahead and edited the two scenes side-by-side from the moment that the premonition starts, in both the vision and in real-time, which you can watch below:

    Now, let’s forget for a moment that Final Destination 5 ever happened, which showed Sam and Molly on Flight 180 after Alex had had his premonition, and the plane seems to explode in a similar fashion that it did in his premonition.
    People have noticed that in Final Destination the plane explodes only seconds after takeoff, completely disregarding how long it took for the explosion to occur in the premonition. At first it doesn’t seem to make much sense, but let’s take a closer look.
    At the beginning, both scenes start out completely the same, and even down to the point where James Wong had reused the same clip of Blake and Christa asking Alex to switch seats with them. If you look closely, you’ll even notice Billy telling the flight attendant, “My seat is over there” at the same time in both scenes. Soon, the students are kicked off of the plane. So, timing and similarities between the two scenes are off to a good start here.
    As you may have noticed, this isn’t a true side-by-side comparison from the fact that I had edited the real-time scene* to allow a break in between when the students are thrown off the plane, and when Alex begins to recount his premonition. During this break, Tod calls Alex’s parents to come and pick him up from the airport, and then grabs a wet rag from the café barista to put on the back of Alex’s neck, allowing up to a minute or so to pass in real-time compared to the premonition. (More about this below).
    To make a quick note, let’s remember a significant moment during the film where a newscaster reports on the possible cause behind the explosion of Flight 180:

“Officials believe deterioration of silicon insulation on an electrical connector to the scavenger pump may have leaked combustible fluids. A spark in the fuel switch in the fuselage may have ignited the fuel line and proceeded to the fuel pump which would have set off the catastrophic explosion.”

    So, the initial cause of the explosion is from the deterioration of the silicon insulation on the electrical connector to the scavenger pump.
    In the premonition, as the plane takes off and increases in altitude, the deterioration of the silicon insulation is currently occurring. After enough time has passed while they are in the air, the plane malfunctions due to this deterioration and ultimately causes the explosion.
    During real-time, the plane remains at the gate the entire duration of when the students are kicked off the plane and until they’re calmed down while waiting in the terminal. Notice how the plane doesn’t pull away from the gate until after Alex has cooled off and begins recounting his vision; by this point, about five or so minutes have passed in real-time since the premonition had occurred.
    Whereas in the vision, since everything occurs per usual, the plane has already taken off at the same instant that the students have been kicked off the plane in real-time.

My Theory

    In real-time, between the moment Alex wakes up from his premonition, and when the plane finally leaves the gate, the silicon insulation was deteriorating during the time that the plane remained on the ground as the students were being escorted off. Once the plane finally took off, much of the insulation had already been corroded, causing the plane to explode just after takeoff, and much sooner/closer than in the premonition.

    Based on my theory, this means that:

• The fuselage does not peel away and suck out the three students

• None of the plane engines catch on fire

• The plane never nosedives before exploding

• There may have never even been a moment where the oxygen masks even dropped from their compartments

• At most, the plane probably shook dramatically before it exploded given the amount of time it was in the air after takeoff (in real-time)

    In my edit, I purposefully matched up the explosions in both real-time and the premonition. This allowed up to about a minute of blank space in the real-time scene, which is where, if it was included in the film, we would see Tod calling Alex’s parents and asking the café barista for a wet rag. This observation supports my theory by showing that with the ‘missing scene’ included, the plane explodes at just about the same time in both the premonition and in real-time.
    In real-time, the amount of time that passed while the plane remained at the gate allowed enough deterioration of the silicon insulation so that when it departed, it exploded so shortly after takeoff. Whereas in the premonition, the deterioration of the silicon insulation occurs during takeoff, causing a cascade of mechanical failures which ultimately lead to the explosion. In both instances, the plane explodes at the same time it was supposed to, however the explosions would differ in how they occur.

UPDATE: 11/19/2016

So I went ahead and decided to create another little video project of editing the premonition version of Flight 180 as if it were the real-time version, to see how it would look inside of the airplane when it exploded after it departed from the gate once the students were kicked off and taken care of.

It actually took some time to really edit everything together and make it flow as smoothly as possible. Even though it is not perfect, this is the best representation I could come up with to portray what it would be like inside of the airplane when it exploded, in real-time, versus the version we see in the actual film which is that of the premonition.

The Explosion’s Trajectory

    Expanding on this part of the film, notice that at the point in which the news anchor is describing the simulation of the explosion, and says ‘catastrophic explosion,’ the simulation shows a spray of red, representing the explosion that kills everyone on board. As noted above, the theory that the plane exploded much earlier than in the premonition probably also resulted in a different manner that the explosion occurred. Remember, just because these characters have premonitions that the accidents happen, doesn’t mean that they’ll happen the same exact way that they do in the visions.
    The news report’s simulation shows the explosion blowing at an angle into the cabin (and ultimately killing our group of students who get kicked off—as well as everyone else), different compared to how it had occurred in the premonition when it was a wall of fire coming in straight from the front of the plane where the explosion occurred.

The wall of fire from the explosion in the premonition.

The supposed trajectory of the explosion when it had occurred in real-life. Notice that it is at more of an angle than a straight wall of fire compared to the gif above.

    If you look very closely at when the plane explodes in real-life from afar (where the students are fighting in the terminal gate), the explosion originates on the left side, front end of the plane, while the trajectory of the explosion is through the cabin and out the right side of the plane, which creates the noticeable silhouette of the plane (showing that the fire did not travel through the cabin, but instead erupted across it). The filmmakers had most likely taken this into consideration as they were planning all of the shots and designs for the film.

UPDATE: 10/16/17

    Here is a more detailed look at the explosion's trajectory, using a Boeing 747 seating chart overlaid onto a fuel line map of a Boeing 747. Based on the news report in the film, a main pump had blown up, creating the catastrophic explosion. This main pump is located at just the front of the left wing, where Engine #3 is located. When the pump explodes both in the premonition and in real-time, the trajectory of the explosion differs in both scenes.
    In the premonition, the direction of the explosion blows outward and away from the passengers. My evidence is when the explosion occurs, it tosses the passengers back into their seats, and the explosion moves toward them as a wall of fire instead of with a trajectory angled at them, such as what the news report had shown.

The explosion in the premonition has a trajectory angled outward and away from the passengers. Evidence in the film shows that there is no explosion angled toward the passengers in the premonition, and an explosion blowing away from them would cause a wall of fire as seen in the film.

The explosion's trajectory is angled outward and away from the passengers as they are thrown backward into their seats. If the explosion's trajectory were angled as it were in real-time, its direction would come through the hole of the exposed fuselage and toward the passengers (allowing for a quicker death!)

The explosion is a wall of fire rather than something angled right toward them. This explosion still kills the students in the same order as in the real-time explosion. Since Ms. Lewton is sitting in the middle seat of the middle aisle, the fire sort of surrounds her before engulfing her. Whereas Terri is sitting in an aisle seat in the middle row and thus the fire engulfs her before Ms. Lewton, even if Terri is sitting further back from Ms. Lewton. Followed by Carter, then Billy, then Alex and then Clear.

    In real time, as you recall reading above, when the plane initially explodes from afar, there is a noticeable silhouette of the plane as the explosion fireballs across the cabin and behind the airplane. Evidence in the film during the news report also shows, in the simulation, that the explosion had an angled trajectory at the passengers instead of away from them. This was not seen in the premonition, or the initial moment of the explosion would have looked different in the premonition, and instead of a wall of fire, it would have been a quick explosion blowing into the cabin.

Notice the difference between this diagram, and the similar diagram above. The explosion is angled more through and behind the cabin, and the explosion blows outward on the right side of the plane. In the .gif further above, with the explosion of Flight 180 from the airport's perspective, the fireball appearing on the right side of the plane (i.e. behind the plane from the airport's perspective) creates the silhouette, showing that the explosion traveled through and across the cabin, rather than outward and away from it. The explosion on the left side is also much smaller than it is in the premonition diagram above, as the explosion blew to the right and behind, instead of outward in a forward direction. 

WHOSE LEG IS THAT?

    Whose leg is it when the whole plane explodes and blood splatters all over the Exit sign and overhead space?

    If there is one shot from a film that makes me sick to my stomach due to how disturbing the nature of it is, it would be the shot of the buckets of blood splattering along the overhead compartments, with a dismembered leg being tossed along with it all, after the entirety of Volée Airlines Flight 180 explodes in a massive, fiery explosion.
    Most people wouldn’t care whose leg it is that we see being thrown across the cabin like a ragdoll, but for those who have seen the movie more than once and actually pay attention to the smaller details that get burned into your conscience, it may actually help ease any kind of disturbance or nausea that we feel when we see this particular shot in this particular scene. Or might possibly make it worse.
    When Flight 180 finally explodes and kills everyone on-board, there is a shot showing the dismemberment of the unfortunate passengers caught in the fateful eruption of fire that the plane was bound to experience. But all we really see is a leg, and for those who are curious—whose leg is that?
    At the beginning of the premonition, once the plane departs from the gate, we see the flight attendants getting ready for take-off. In one shot, we notice that it shows the left side of the plane, and one female flight attendant pulling her seat down getting ready for take-off. Let’s call her Flight Attendant A.

    This flight attendant is sitting in the direct line of the explosion in the premonition (reference the section above discussing the trajectory of the explosion), and since the explosion's trajectory is outward and away from the passengers, her body parts could easily be blow across the cabin and into the overhead space, as seen in the gif above.
    However, two other flight attendants are sitting on the right side of the plane, one of whom becomes more noticeable moments later in the film as being an attendant who helps kick Alex and the gang off the flight. Let’s call the male one Flight Attendant B, and the female one Flight Attendant C.

    Gathering from surrounding clues while watching the scene, I can only assume that they are sitting directly in line with Larry Murnau on the right side of the plane, at the front of the section that the students are in, and right at the point where the blood splatter occurs (at one point during the premonition, Flight Attendant B looks to his right and seems to assure a passenger that everything is okay).
    The last guess of whose leg that could be would be someone from First Class, as the force of the explosion blows everything back into the economy cabin. It could even be more than one person being turned inside out from the force of the explosion, which would be good reason for the large amounts of blood to splatter from the front of the plane.

INCONSISTENCIES

    Everybody who has seen both films and paid enough attention to the way that both plane accidents play out could tell you that each had a slightly different outcome (or, you could call them goofs in the film industry). I won’t go over the smaller goofs, but there is one that I would like to mention for what I am going to explain next.
    Let’s assume that Final Destination 5’s orchestra happened in the same manner as the premonition version of Final Destination (and let’s face it, Final Destination 5 did follow the original’s premonition versus the real-life explosion—it’s just more exciting that way—as opposed to how it should have exploded according to my theory above).

The Engines

    Engine #1 should have never caught on fire and exploded. I would like to point out that the one reason why I believe that the filmmakers of Final Destination 5 believed that it was a burning plane engine that took Flight 180 down was due to the following shot from the premonition in Final Destination:

I had originally thought that this ball of fire was from a burning engine. But it's not!

    In this shot, a fire erupts from the outside of the plane. At first glance, one would assume that this explosion forms from one of the plane’s engines (Engine #1 or #2); or, that was my assumption at least. However, as mentioned above, the row where these unfortunate students were sat was at the front end of the plane’s left wing, nowhere near where either of the engines are located. So, where did this explosion form from? Let’s take a look at the news report’s simulation of the plane explosion again.

    You will notice that there is a fuel line connector right at the junction of where the front end of the wing and the cabin connect, and at the row in which the three ill-fated students were sat. It is based off of this evidence that my guess of where the ball of fire explodes from is this particular fuel line connector. Once the third student is sucked out of the plane and the explosion occurs, I believe that this causes the ultimate downfall of Flight 180. This explosion most likely cut off fuel to Engines #1 and #2, causing the plane to nosedive and eventually explode.

Blink and you’ll miss it! This freeze frame shows flames outside of the fuselage where the ball of fire formed after the third student was sucked out of the plane. Remember: the engines are located behind the exposed fuselage.

In the film, when the students enter the plane from the jet bridge, they walk through the galley and arrive in the section of the plane where their seats are assigned. Any passengers who sit further back from the plane must travel through this middle section, and then through another galley, before arriving at the back section of the plane where Sam and Molly would be sitting.

    It was also shown in the news report simulation that there was an explosion that blew into and across the cabin, and no mention of an engine catching on fire or it even being a cause of the explosion.

Notice how the engines aren’t considered in the news report simulation, and that instead it follows what had happened in the premonition where an explosion occurs at rows 18 and 19, ultimately causing the fuselage to peel away.

(Headphones Recommended) Listen closely to the sound effects used in this short clip from the premonition in Final Destination. A series of muffled explosions occur almost simultaneously to the news report’s simulation of the cause of the explosion. Funny coincidence? Or detailed planning from the filmmakers?

    A burning engine shouldn’t have even been considered in Final Destination’s premonition, since the students were sitting further ahead of the plane than the engine that ended up exploding in Final Destination 5, and was never even seen in the premonition sequence. However, as pointed out earlier, the filmmakers of Final Destination 5 had the same idea that I had had for the longest time, thinking that the section of the cabin in Final Destination’s premonition was at the very back of the plane.
    To further back up the theory that it wasn’t an exploding engine that initially took Flight 180 down, the debris from the exploding engine that sliced into the fuselage was not the cause of the three students being pulled from the airplane. There was no explosion inside the cabin in Final Destination 5 when the fuselage ripped open, compared to how the fuselage explodes and peels away in the original’s premonition.

This is clearly an explosion.

Debris ripping into the fuselage would most likely NOT cause body parts to fly in the air, nor any explosions for that matter.

The Explosion

    So, as mentioned before, the explosion of Flight 180 in Final Destination 5 was following the same manner as orchestrated in the premonition of the original, where the plane explodes further up front rather than at the left wing.
    In the original film when the plane explodes, there are two ‘filler clips’ to give the movie a more dramatic impact for the scene. In this case, the shots of the blood splattering along the ceiling of the airplane cabin, as well as Alex being thrown backward into this seat, could be taken out to help with continuity purposes. In the below gif, you will notice that the two shots in the premonition scene are nearly seamless despite an angle change and the continuity being a second off. The filler shots were taken out to show a real-time representation of the explosion during the premonition, and actually showing a better example of where the students are sat on the plane. Remember, they’re sitting in the middle of the plane where the wings are located, so the explosion literally engulfs them immediately once you take the filler clips out.

Notice in the two clips how the explosion rips through the section that the students are sitting in at just about the same time. With the ‘filler clips’ removed, it shows a more accurate portrayal of how the explosion is orchestrated inside of the plane compared to outside of the plane.

    When the ‘filler clips’ are present, however, they give a false sense of how long it takes for the explosion to reach Alex, and makes it seem like the students are sitting further back in the plane. The ‘filler clips’ allow a longer amount of time for the wall of fire to travel through the cabin, so when comparing the two explosion segments it seems that the fire reaches both sets of characters at the same time.
    I would also like to add that the shot of Sam being eaten away by the flames would probably be a more realistic portrayal of what would happen to someone sitting in the back of the plane if the front end exploded. The amount of fire and the intensity of the heat would be noticeably different where Sam was sitting compared to that of where Alex was sitting.

Alex – Closer to the explosion, the perspective of the explosion would be more of a wall of fire (or an actual explosion) rather than flames spilling into the cabin, more intense heat, killed by possibly being roasted from the inside outward

Sam – Further away from the explosion, the perspective of the explosion would be more of an influx of flames rather than a wall of fire (explosion), possibly less intense heat (but still very hot), possibly roasted from the outside inward

    I would also like to mention that the way that the plane explodes and breaks apart in Final Destination 5 is similar to the way that TWA Flight 800 exploded and broke apart, a plane accident that had actually occurred in 1996 when it exploded over New York City after departing from JFK Airport, much like what had happened in Final Destination. Though the film is not connected to the actual explosion of TWA Flight 800, they are very similar to one another in how they play out, in which the nose of the plane breaks off, while one wing also detaches from the main cabin of the airplane.

One of the biggest misconceptions about the project is that it was based on the real-life disaster of TWA Flight 800 that occurred in 1996. Like in the movie, the TWA disaster involved a Boeing 747 that exploded after take-off from JFK International Airport in New York en route to Paris. The TV spec script for The X-Files however, was actually written in 1994.

    Volée Airlines Flight 180 was a fictional Boeing 747 airliner departing for Paris, France that exploded over JFK National Airport shortly after take-off, killing 280 passengers on board. This essay was a detailed analysis on the fate of the airline, covering the seating arrangement of certain students and how Final Destination 5 inaccurately portrayed it. Also inaccurately portraying the explosion of Flight 180, Final Destination 5 included Engine #1 failing and exploding which ultimately led to the fuselage being exposed, when in actuality that was never a consideration in the fatal explosion. To further expand on the inaccuracy, ‘filler clips’ used in the premonition sequence of Final Destination allowed a misrepresented idea of where the students had sat on the plane, causing myself as well as the filmmakers of Final Destination 5 to believe that all events seen on Flight 180 took place at the back of the plane.
    The essay also expanded on my fan theory of why Flight 180 exploded so shortly after takeoff compared to that seen in the premonition, as well as the trajectory of the explosion in the premonition versus that of in the real-life explosion. This essay also touched on the dismembered leg seen when the plane explodes and who it belongs to, the possible options being one of three flight attendants, or one or multiple bodies from passengers in the first class section.
    I wrote this essay for fun, from somebody who loves the Final Destination franchise and can watch them as many times as possible. From somebody who can pay great attention to a scene from a movie. From someone who believes that they will one day be killed in a plane accident (yes, it's true, I do believe that). I didn’t mind succumbing myself to watch this scene play out over and over again for the sake of creating a blog post, which sounds rather masochistic. I, however, don’t see it as a form of torture, but rather as maybe—possibly—a form of preparation.
    I guess one day we’ll find out...

*I had made another small edit in the premonition scene when the plane explodes. There is a quick shot that is about half a second long of Alex throwing his head back from the force of the explosion (right after the shot of the blood splattering inside of the cabin). I removed this shot to allow a more smooth flow of the wall of flames after the plane explodes. Nothing is gained or lost from the removal of this shot.