MovieChat Forums > The High and the Mighty (1954) Discussion > How long was the flight?

How long was the flight?

posted 12 years ago by alexbunardzic
7 replies | jump to latest

How long was the regular flight from Honolulu to San Francisco back in 1954? Looked like way longer than 5 hours that you expect to enjoy these days...

[–] shula1010430 11 years ago

As a former airline employee--NOT a pilot--I'm guessing that the flying time from HNL to SFO was between six and seven hours back in 1954.

FAS1

[–] alh623 11 years ago

At the start of the movie they say the flight is 12 hours. Very long but they weren't flying very high either

[–] spookyrat1 11 years ago

I think the estimated flight time was said to be 12 hours 15 minutes.

[–] CashHog 9 years ago

Honolulu to San Francisco is 2080nm so at a cruising speed of 180kts or about 3nm/min so that's 2080/180 = 11:33 enroute flying time without regard for wind.

The DC-4 had a cruising range of 4250 miles.

So, the estimated flight time of 12:15 was reasonable.

[–] zafrom 8 years ago

Per Lenny Wilby before takeoff, "Twelve hours and sixteen minutes exactly." But what time in Honolulu did the plane take off? When Donald Flaherty staggers to the check-in counter at the airport, the wall clock seems to show about 5:22 PM. Alsop tells him, "You'll board in about thirty minutes." So if the plane leaves at about 5:50 PM Honolulu time, plus 12:16, plus 3 (or 2?) hours later in San Francisco, it should be about 8-9:00 AM -- daylight -- when the plane lands. However...

In the book, the plane leaves shortly after noon and is scheduled to arrive in San Francisco at about 2:30 AM. Per Miss Spalding to Miss Holst, San Francisco is only "two hours ahead of us, you know." Miss Holst responds, "What a hell of an hour to arrive anywhere!" Did the Honolulu time zone time change in the past 63 years? And why land planes at 2:30 AM? Even if the SF neighbors don't complain, don't the passengers at least prefer a better time?

[–] hobnob53 7 years ago

Did the Honolulu time zone time change in the past 63 years?

Yes, it did change somewhere along the line, though I don't know exactly when. In 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, the time difference between Honolulu and Washington was 5½ hours, because the Japanese had been instructed to deliver their note rejecting the American proposals at "precisely 1 PM", which was 7:30 AM in Hawaii -- the point being to give the Americans a nominal half hour before the attack was scheduled to commence at 8:00 AM (1:30 in D.C.). Of course, the Japanese botched it and didn't deliver the message until after 2 in D.C. -- a half hour after the attack had begun. (It's rare but not unheard-of for a time zone to be a half hour, rather than a full hour, different from others; for example, Tehran, Iran, is 12½ hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Time.)

Today, Hawaii is five hours behind Eastern Standard Time, and six behind Eastern Daylight Time -- the state, like Arizona and part of Indiana, doesn't observe daylight savings so their clocks never change. So clearly at some point they shifted their clocks to be a full five (or six) hours away from the U.S. east coast, or a full two hours off California and Pacific Time (three during daylight savings).

I don't know whether Hawaii ever observed daylight savings but as far as this movie is concerned, if by 1954 the present time zones were in existence and the flight left Honolulu at 5 PM and took 12 hours, it would arrive in San Francisco at about 7 AM Pacific Time -- or 8 AM if it were daylight savings. Since they arrived at night (around 2 AM or so), clearly the airplane would have to have left around noon, Honolulu time. But remember also that the flight was prolonged by the loss of an engine, so their flight time was longer than planned. How much longer we don't know, but for them to have arrived at 2 or 3 or so in the morning the flight really should have left by 10 or 11 AM. (If Hawaii was still on the older zone time, add a half hour to the arrival time.)

It's not at all unusual to have planes land at night, though daytime is of course more heavily trafficked.

[–] ElKabong1940 (315) 2 years ago

I flew from San Francisco to Hawaii in 1967 in a C-54 which is the same as the DC-4 while in the Nacy Reserves. Flying time was 12+ hours to and 11+
from.