I saw this movie on TV and liked it. As a pilot of some experience I was more interested in the aircraft and flying than rest of the story. The portrayal of early air mail operations is a good one, even to the pilot's notes. Jeppeson charts had not yet been published and each pilot had his own notes, which were shared with other pilots. It's easy to forgive the film makers for using a 1930's Stearman airplane instead of a 1920's DH4. I'm not familiar with the air mail route numbers but CAM 5 (which appears on the side of the plane) might well have been correct for that route. The crash itself was the correct choice: don't stretch the glide and go between the tees to shear off the wings. Aviation movies are almost never this accurate. The only thing about the movie that didn't ring true, aviation wise, was that before leaving Boise, he didn't perform a pre-flight inspection of the aircraft. Not doing this after work had been done on the plane was very serious pilot error. He would have seen the oil leak and avoided the crash.
Review of The Aviator
