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Sound of Movies – Air America hosted by Ashley Wincer and Ann Pulbrook. To listen to the audio podcast, press play above or press play below to watch the Air America official trailer.
Air America is a 1990 American action comedy film directed by Roger Spottiswoode. Starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr as Air America pilots, during the Vietnam War, flying covert missions in Laos.
For those not familiar with my background, I’ve been involved with aviation since 1992. My area of expertise has been civilian airline operations since 2002, both in the United States and Australia. That is part of the reason I really enjoyed the movie Air America. It is not a typical civilian airline operation, incredibly dangerous, but fascinating too. The closest civilian airline I’ve come across with similar type of flying and would love to fly for is Susi Air, operating in Indonesia. Although I must stress, they are a regular civilian airline and the only common elements are some of the STOL aircraft types flown and the types of landing strips in the highlands of West Papua.
Air America was first brought to my attention as a birthday gift, in the form of a non-fiction book, Air America written by Christopher Robbins. It was given to me as a birthday present by close family friends and it was a fascinating read. I highly recommend reading Air America for anyone who is interested in flying, airline operations or aviation in general.
Both Ann and I enjoyed Air America, but for different reasons. Ann thought the overall cast worked well together. There was great humour weaved into the story between the serious nature of the story. It’s also a story that is not normally told, a small insight into the covert side of wars through civilian companies. We both enjoyed the music, although the music is different from that used in Forrest Gump or Good Morning Vietnam. It is a good representation of the music of that era, the Vietnam war era. It should be mentioned, I absolutely loved the flying and the aircraft types used in the movie.
We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of the Sound of Movies – Air America. This episode of The Sound of Movies was broadcast from the Gippsland FM studios on Saturday December 5th 2015 at 12pm.
If you have any questions about the Sound of Movies, please feel free to contact either Ashley Wincer or Ann Pulbrook by e-mail. You can follow the Sound of Movies on Facebook, Twitter or subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes. Thank-you.
