Every aviation incident Harrison Ford has been involved in ranked from least to most perilous
Over the years, fans have become extremely familiar with Harrison Ford piloting the Millennium Falcon as Han Solo in Star Wars. Then there was his turn as the President of the United States in Air Force One, who gruffly told Gary Oldman’s terrorist to “Get off my plane” before hurling him out of the cargo hold to his doom, then piloted the aircraft into safe airspace himself. Basically, what we’re saying is that Ford is synonymous with flying in his films – and that’s probably because he’s a keen aviation enthusiast in real life.
In a 2010 interview with Aviation Magazine, the A-lister revealed that his fascination began in the ’60s when he was a penniless carpenter who managed to scrape together enough cash for some flight training courses at Wisconsin’s Wild Rose Airport. It took him until the ’90s to be in a position where he could buy his own plane, and since then, he’s rarely had his feet on the ground.
“I have more airplanes than it’s fair for anybody to have,” Ford admitted to Airport Journals in 2004. His pride and joy, though, is his de Haviland Beaver utility aircraft because its round Pratt & Whitney 985 engine makes such a beautiful sound. That, people, is a man who knows his planes.
Now, simply having an enthusiasm for aviation plus the time and money needed to learn how to fly does not mean you’ll never find yourself in a hairy situation. In truth, Ford has had a number of aerial scrapes, from near misses to crashes that did serious damage to him and his plane.
Here is every aviation incident Ford has been involved in, ranked in order of least to most perilous.
Every incident ranked from least to most perilous:
6. Lincoln, Nebraska runway overshoot
Ford’s least perilous aviation mishap is undoubtedly this incident from 2000, but we’d wager it would still make nervous fliers come out in a cold sweat.
As Ford tried to land his six-seater Beechcraft Bonanza plane on an airport runway in Lincoln, Nebraska, he found himself at the mercy of the weather. The wind whipped and slammed into the plane, causing the What Lie’s Beneath star to lose control of the craft as it taxied.
It was blown off the runway and sustained minor damage, while Ford and his passengers were unharmed—physically, we mean. It’s unclear how many of them were keen to get back in the air anytime soon.
5. Hawthorne Airport runway crossing
On April 24th, 2020, eagle-eyed passengers of a plane landing on the runway at LA’s Hawthorne Airport saw something strange. A small two-seater Aviat Husky biplane crossed the runway around 3,600 feet away from them – and that plane had Indiana Jones at the wheel.
The Federal Aviation Administration quickly investigated Ford’s mistake, which could have led to much more serious consequences if luck hadn’t been on his side. Ford’s people also released a statement saying that his craft was never truly in danger of causing a collision and that he had simply misheard air traffic control’s orders. It stressed, “He immediately acknowledged the mistake and apologized to ATC for the error.”
We’ll chalk this one up to a near-miss.
4. Gulfstream III engine fire
Ford’s first aviation mishap came when he wasn’t even in charge of the plane.
Back in August 1987, the Blade Runner star was on a private Gulfstream III jet with Clint Eastwood and his longtime girlfriend/co-star Sondra Locke. The plane was flying from Paris to LA, but an engine fire broke out somewhere along the way, and the landing gear became stuck—which all sounds fairly horrifying. Mercifully, though, the pilot was able to divert the jet to Bangor, Maine, and nobody was hurt.
Naturally, because these passengers were super-important celebrities with people to see and places to be, mechanics were quickly dispatched from California to fix the plane. Ford, Eastwood, and Locke simply had to slum it at the Airport Hilton Hotel for a night before they were back en route to LA the next day.
3. Lake Piru helicopter crash
On October 23rd, 1999, Ford took to the skies from Van Nuys Airport in a helicopter. Alongside his flight instructor, everything seemed to be going smoothly for the Bell 206 JetRanger aircraft until Ford began to practice auto rotations.
What is an “auto rotation”, you may ask? Well, it’s what pilots do to simulate a scenario in which their engine loses power. The protocol is to disengage the main rotor blades from the engine because then the blades rotate of their own accord as the craft lowers, slowing the rate of descent.
Unfortunately, on this dry run, something went wrong on Ford’s second attempt to power the engine on. It didn’t respond as quickly as it should have, and the helicopter wound up going down near Lake Piru, which is around 45 miles northwest of LA. The craft smacked the ground hard, sliding forward in the riverbed’s loose sand and hitting a log, which caused it to flip onto its side. Thankfully, neither Ford nor his instructor were hurt, but the aircraft was pretty banged up.
When Ford was later asked how badly the helicopter was damaged on Inside the Actor’s Studio, he deadpanned, “I broke it.”
2. John Wayne Airport taxiway landing
Try to imagine this scenario: you’re an Air Traffic Controller at John Wayne Airport in Orange County. A small Aviat Husky plane suddenly flies over a Boeing 737 with more than 100 souls onboard before landing on a taxiway. It’s a true heart-in-mouth moment for everyone involved, but thankfully no damage is done to machine or man.
Then you hear a voice crackling through your radio. A rugged voice. A familiar voice. A voice which says, “I’m the schmuck who landed on the taxiway.” It turns out the pilot was told to land his plane on the runway but made an error and landed on the parallel taxiway instead. The pilot – whose voice is tugging at the back of your brain – explains that he was distracted by a moving airliner and turbulence from another landing plane.
You tell the voice, “It’s no big deal,” to calm him down, but he knows it is a big deal. In fact, it’s a very big deal. After all, landing on a taxiway is a breach of the Federal Aviation Authority’s regulations and could result in a license being revoked. You tell the voice that he will need to fill out some paperwork, so you just need his name and license number.
“My name is Harrison Ford,” the voice replies.
Wait, what?!
1. Penmar Golf Course emergency landing
In deciding upon the order of this list, it was always obvious which incident would rank as the most perilous. It is, of course, the one which resulted in Ford breaking his pelvis, arm, and ankle after making an emergency landing on the Penmar Golf Course in Venice, California.
The crash, classified as near-fatal, occurred on March 5, 2015. It wasn’t caused by anything Ford did – in fact, an engine fault completely out of his control caused the vintage World War II plane to nosedive. Amazingly, Ford recovered well enough to make an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! less than seven months later, and was able to talk about his harrowing experience. He mused, “I remember. Not all of it; I remember some of it. I remember the engine stopping; I remember that part very well.” He recalled the ATC tower telling him to land normally, but then that was his last memory until five days after the crash.
In the wake of the incident, Ford revealed that his wife, Calista Flockhart, refused to get into any more vintage planes with him. He admitted to The Hollywood Reporter that the crash and his recovery “was really hard on my family”, but he had no intention of retiring from flying. After all, “There was a mechanical issue with the aeroplane I could not have known about or attended to in any way. So, in the words of the great philosopher Jimmy Buffett: ‘Shit happens.'”
