The 2012 film “Flight” follows the story of Captain Whip Whitaker (played by Denzel Washington), who, in an emergency, executes a highly unconventional maneuver to save the lives of his passengers. Despite his heroic actions, Whip is initially far from being the ideal hero; he’s a drug addict and alcoholic facing personal issues even while working. During a flight, a minor malfunction jeopardizes everything, prompting Whip to creatively invert the plane and fly it upside down before crash-landing in a field, managing to keep 96 out of 102 passengers alive.

While Whip’s heroic maneuver is just the starting point of a more profound drama in which his life spirals out of control, the striking image of the overturned plane is hard to forget. Despite feeling like a true story due to its realistic plot, strong character development, and stellar performances, “Flight” is a work of fiction. Screenwriter John Gatins crafted the story from his imagination, though he drew minor inspiration from a real-life aviation disaster.

“Flight” is entirely fictional, and the character of Captain Whip Whitaker is not based on an actual person. The challenges he faces throughout the film are entirely fabricated. John Gatins aimed to create an original tale about a flawed pilot attempting to make the right choices. Interestingly, though, the upside-down flight maneuver executed by Captain Whitaker does have a real-world precedent, inspired by an actual plane crash.

Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crashed in January 2000. A single jackscrew in the plane failed, causing the entire vehicle to plummet toward the ground. The pilots on board Flight 261 briefly flipped the plane while flying it in for its crash landing, and some unsettling audio from the accident proves that they were just as amazed as anyone that the plane was capable of flying upside down. Tragically, unlike the movie, the unorthodox maneuver wasn’t enough to save Flight 261. In the end, all the passengers and the pilots were killed in the crash.

Even without having a true story to fuel it, “Flight” felt like a surefire hit. Denzel Washington is a massive star, and the story has a compelling hook.Throughout the many years that John Gatins was developing the film, however, there were plenty of times that the project seemed like a lost cause.

Gatins started writing the story in the early 2000s, but at the time, it was hard to find a studio willing to take on an R-rated movie that didn’t have mass genre appeal. In 2010, Denzel Washington read the script and signed onto the movie, but even his star power wasn’t enough to get it greenlit right away. 

Director Robert Zemeckis finally got on board in 2011, but he had to negotiate the budget with Paramount Pictures, which was concerned about the cost of the special effects needed for the movie. “Flight” is far from being one of the most expensive movies ever made, but the airplane sequences still called for some serious cash. Ultimately Zemeckis and Washington took pay cuts to ultimately get Paramount to agree to make the film. At that point, they couldn’t be sure that “Flight” would break even, much less become a big financial success that would be well-remembered more than a decade after its debut.

Thankfully, the movie debuted to positive reviews, and it made a killing at the box office, earning over $161 million globally off a roughly $30 million budget. While it may be on the lower end of the best films in Denzel Washington’s career, it still has a place in Hollywood history.