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H+P C-119 to be used in "Flight of the Phoenix " remake

Posted by B Darnell on Tue Dec 02, 2003 03:29:30 PM

H&P plane to star in 'Flight of the Phoenix'

By CAROLE CLOUDWALKER
A vintage C-119 airplane owned by Hawkins & Powers Aviation of Greybull will be featured in a remake of the movie, "Flight of the Phoenix."

H&P pilot Bob West, along with co-pilot Steve Dunn and flight mechanic Jim Hederman, who lived in Cody as a child, will take the former military cargo and troop carrier to Africa by early next week, West says.

Filming of the movie is expected to begin in February, and will conclude in the spring.

The original film, "Flight of the Phoenix," starred Jimmy Stewart. The story is about a plane that was dispatched to pick up an oil rig crew and deliver a replacement crew.

"The plane goes down in the deserts of Africa," West said, before the crew manages to patch it back together and fly to safety.

In the original film, the plane used was not a C-119.

"That was a C-82, the predecessor of the C-119," West said. But the two planes look similar, with twin engines, high wings and twin booms. They were known as "flying boxcars."

"We used it for firefighting and fish hauling," West said of the C-119, which made its last flight in 1989. H&P has owned the aircraft since the 1970s. It was grounded from firefighting in the late 1980s, West said. This aircraft was from Canada, although the U.S. military also used the planes.

The new Fox film, which stars Dennis Quaid, will not be West's first venture on the silver screen.

"I was in 'The Last Flight of Dixie Dancer,'" a made-for- television movie starring Angela Lansbury made in the early 1990s, he says. "I was filmed as I got off the plane - I was in the background."

Because he appeared on film, "every time the movie shows, we get a little royalty," West added. "So I have just over $4 in my retirement account."

Hawkins & Powers' planes have appeared in other motion pictures, especially their helicopters. And an H&P C-119 was in the firefighting film, "Always," starring Richard Dreyfus and Holly Hunter.

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