Harrison Ford reveals his most embarrassing moment: “I knew I fucked up”
One of the many reasons we love Harrison Ford so much is that he embodies so many of his most famous characters in real life. He’s a real-life adventurer to rival Indiana Jones or Han Solo and hasn’t let age slow him down. This is admirable in principle, but does sometimes results in the world holding its breath for its collective cool grandpa.
The Hollywood icon has been involved in more plane accidents than is healthy. Perhaps his most famous – or infamous – occurred in 2015. He was forced to crash-land his vintage plane on a golf course, suffering a broken ankle and pelvis in the process.
Two years later, he almost caused a much worse incident. He landed his plane at an airport in Orange County, Florida, on a taxiway instead of a runway. This led him to fly uncomfortably close to a Boeing 737, which could have caused the star all sorts of trouble.
During an interview with GQ, Ford took some time to reflect on his various near-misses with the reaper. Speaking about the 2017 incident specifically, he revealed that he was particularly embarrassed about making such a small, but potentially deadly mistake.
“Officially, I admitted to two of the common mental processes that can lead a pilot to making a mistake—distraction and fixation,” he said. “I thought that I would suffer the consequences…I knew I fucked up. I knew what process I would have to go through. I even knew it would be in the newspapers. I didn’t know it would be for weeks.”
Ford has been a fan of aviation for most of his life. He began pilot training in the 1960s, but couldn’t afford to keep it up. Once he became a megastar and money was no longer an object, he finally completed his qualifications in the 1990s. While his mishaps are the ones that regularly make the news, he’s done a lot of good from the air, too. He’s regularly provided emergency support for stranded hikers in the state of Wyoming, once airlifting a lost Boy Scout out of Yellowstone National Park. In 2010, he was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame
Of course, Ford doesn’t need to be airborne to do himself damage. He broke his ankle when a hydraulic door fell on him during the making of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Several years after that, he hurt his shoulder making Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, a project that definitely wasn’t worth getting injured for. It’s certainly impressive that a man born during World War II can bounce back from all these knocks. We just wish he wouldn’t need to quit so often.
One unexpected benefactor of Ford’s run-in with the 737 was Donald Trump’s then-national security adviser, Michael Flynn. The former soldier had disgraced himself over his connections to Russia and resigned on the very same day as the actor’s near-miss.
In Ford’s own words, “He was in the shitbox, and it took him out of the news cycle.”
