The Plane Behind Lost’s Oceanic Airlines Flight 815
Web: www.stevenfrischling.com — E-Mail: fish@flyingwithfish.com
27/01/2009 – The Plane Behind Lost’s Oceanic Airlines Flight 815
A few days ago an anonymous reader of Flying With Fish asked me if I had noticed the paint scheme of the plane used on the ABC’s prime time television show Lost, to replicate the crashed fuselage of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 reminded me of the old Delta Airlines livery.
To be honest I have never seen the television show Lost. I know, everyone else seems to have seen it, the fans of the show appear fanatical, but I had never seen the show. Of course having never seen Lost, I was up for the challenge of finding out what this Flying With Fish reader was talking about.
For those of you, who like me, had never watch a single episode of Lost, the show follows the survivors of a plane crash on a deserted island. More specifically, the show follow the survivors of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815, operated by a Boeing 777-200ER, which departed Sydney International Airport (SYD) on September 22 2004 at 2:55pm, headed for Los Angeles (LAX) , due to arrive at 10:42am. Oceanic Flight 815 was blocked at 13hrs 52min, and the 777-200ER aircraft was configured for 3 classes of service. The seating configuration is for 30-First (F), 36-Business (J), 277-Economy (Y).
I won’t even go into the fact that the seating chart and capacity makes no sense with business class and economy class having identical seat configurations…because of course this is a completely fictitious aircraft from a made-for-TV airline
…so back to the original question, of does the aircraft’s paint scheme remind me of Delta Airlines’ old livery. The answer is in fact ‘Yes’ it certainly does.
Upon doing some research it turns out that the aircraft used on the set of Lost is in fact an old Delta Airlines Lockheed L-1011-385. The aircraft was formerly an Eastern Airlines aircraft, as N308EA first flying on the 30th of June 1972, before entering service with Delta Airlines on the 22nd of August 1991 as N783DL. Before ‘crashing’ onto the set of Lost, Delta’s N783DL has racked up 58,841 flight hours, with 28,822 successful landings.
And for those of you who watched the first episode that depict a computer created video of the aircraft breaking up in mid-flight and crashing, the aircraft used in that video is of a Boeing 767-400.
Happy Flying!
I discovered your homepage by coincidence.
Very interesting posts and well written.
I will put your site on my blogroll.
🙂
Great post. Very interesting. I love the way your blogs flow–so easy and quick to read but informative. Thanks, Fish!
very interesting since I’m one of the Lost fanatics you speak of lol the 815 flight took off on Sept. 22 2004 just for clarification. They still have the plane parts in Hawaii on the props lot somewhere. Neat stuff !!
The reason why it looks like a Delta, is because the fuselage used by the film company is an old Delta L1011.
If you read through the post, you’ll see I have detailed the exact DL L-1011 used on Lost. Its history and its track record.
Happy Flying!
-Fish