The TWA scene at the beginning is shot with two different actors playing the same copilot. One is wearing three stripes and the other is wearing four stripes. This is the result of editing together the original shoot and the re-shoot.
Early in the film, the plane that's filmed landing in Panama is the Cessna 414 that was introduced later in the movie and is flown by another pilot. At this point the main character is flying his Piper Aerostar around Central America and it should have been used in this clip for consistency and accuracy of aircraft.
In the opening scenes the co-pilot has three shoulder stripes. When he goes to sleep he has his hat on and three shoulder stripes then four shoulder stripes and no hat while sleeping. After a while, the co-pilot is back to his original three shoulder stripes.
When Seal is first shown the airplane in the hangar, the brown sheet that covers the nose and most of the windscreen moves numerous times between shots.
In one scene, Barry was in the hanger near the plane and had a cut below his left eye which appeared and disappeared in several scenes.
Barry Seal did not quit his job at TWA. In July of 1972 he was fired for taking fraudulent medical leave in order to participate in an explosives smuggling operation.
When the agent in the FBI Bank Financial Division looks at a print out that lists several banks in "Mena, AK", another agent comments that "there's a lot of money in Mena, Arkansas." The actual 2-letter abbreviation for Arkansas is "AR", "AK" is for Alaska.
When the controller on duty points out an unidentified aircraft on his radar scope, the blip is actually identified with an airliner tag. If it was truly an unidentified blip, there would be no tag displayed.
The film shows Tom Cruise's character in jail narrating about a new sheriff in town. It shows Ronald Reagan speaking to his fellow Americans. He is out of jail and and the CIA offers to relocate him and his family to Mena, AR. The indicates his move to Mena '80. Reagan did not take the oath of office until 1981.
The Piper Aerostar that Cruise flies has a range of just over a 1000 miles. Barry Seal explains that he flies from Mena, AR to Medellin, Colombia, which is a distance of almost 2300 miles. He would not be able to refuel at the airstrip where he picks up the drugs, but plans to fly non-stop to Louisiana, another 2000 miles.
The whole time that Barry Seal lived in Arkansas pay phones cost a dime, not a quarter as he is shown using and had numerous ones stacked on top of phones. In fact, Arkansas was one of the last states to go to 25 cents, keeping the 10 cent rate well into the 1990s. However, since he was making long-distance calls, they would certainly cost more than the 10 cents needed for a local call.
At 30:38, a map is shown on screen of what the narrator says is Nicaragua. Tom Cruise's character, Barry Seals, quickly corrects himself and says, "oh no, that's El Salvador." The country mistakenly labeled "Nicaragua" on the map is actually Honduras, not El Salvador. However, the mistake could be deliberate one as there is a writing during end credits stating authors of picture know about the mistake.
The airplane with the tail registration number 'N164HH' shows up brand new in Barry Seal's hangar in Mena, after having one engine burnt and fuselage shot while Barry was taking photos over Colombia in the previous scene. However, he could have several airplanes with same number, considering they were given by CIA, and one sequence shows various registration numbers being altered.
The DA tells Barry they are going to put him in a "4 foot by 6 foot cell for the rest of his life." The smallest cells in state and federal prison are 8 feet by 10 feet. However, she was exaggerating about how small the cell would be do stress the how unpleasant his imprisonment would be rather than tell him the literal dimensions of his cell.
On the boxes with weapons is written in Cyrillic "Kalasnikov". Correct writing is "Kalashnikov".
In a scene when Barry Seal left the cockpit and walk out of the airplane, the cockpit shown is a Boeing 737 classic cockpit. However when Seal walk out of the airplane, it is shown that the plane is a Airbus A320 with TWA livery. TWA never operated Airbus A320 and Airbus A320 has not yet fly in 1970's. Airbus A320 made it first flight on 1987, eight years before the event of the movie.
Our hero is said to be a TWA pilot, yet one scene near the beginning of the film shows the plane he is landing to be in Eastern Airlines colors.
The sheriff's wife pronounces "Ouachita" as "Wa-chee-ta" instead of "Wash-i-taw".
When being taken for a tour around Colombia in a brightly colored helicopter, the door is open and through the window of the door can be seen the start of a website address on the side of the helicopter. All that can be seen is 'www.' with the door covering the rest of the address. The World Wide Web was not around in 1980.
Towards the end of the film, when Barry is making the video tapes in the motel room, an exterior shot of the room and the motel in general show electronic key card locks on the doors. While mechanical key card locks had existed for a few years by the time this scene takes place, the digital mag stripe-based locks seen in the film had not yet been developed.
The propeller-driven Customs plane that intercepts Barry and convinces him to land in the suburban neighborhood in the early 1980s has "US Customs & Border Protection" on the side. At that time in American history it should've said "US Customs Service," as Customs & Border Protection was created in 2003.
The Coast Guard planes are Beechcraft King Air C90 GTx aircraft. Hawker Beechcraft company (now Textron) introduced the GTx version with winglets and Rockwell Collins ProLine 21 glass cockpit in 2010.
When he meets with his CIA contact, Schafer, after being re-located to Arkansas in the early 1980s, Schafer is seen getting into a Chevrolet Celebrity with flush headlights. This style of Celebrity did not come about until 1986.
The 1978 Cold War map has a number errors in Europe - for example Finland would not have a coast on the Arctic Ocean, since Norway extends across northern Europe to its border with the USSR, and Denmark appears to have invaded West Germany.
In the beginning scenes, Tom Cruise's character meets "Schafer" in a diner in Louisiana. In the background, through the window, you can see a Publix SuperMarket sign in the background. Publix is a grocery chain that started in Florida, and didn't leave the state of Florida until after the 90's; which is after the time period of the movie.
Though Jorge Ochoa was Colombian, he is played by an actor with a strong Mexican accent using Mexican slang.