Factual error: Shortly after the crash, when Chuck is in the raft, one of the engines continues to run even though it is half submerged in water. The engine would not have exploded like it did, rather, it would have just stopped running as soon as it became disconnected from its fuel source and flooded with water.
Suggested correction: The aircraft seems like a Airbus A300 or 310 but it is really a MD-11 or DC-10 because you can clearly see that the front body with wing with engine attached sink leaving the tail section. So the tail has a fuel tank and the third engine. The engine normally compresses air then burns it by feeding in fuel and igniting it. But can't compress air because the turbines are in the water. The fuel would in this case would "flood" the engine then the igniter ignites it and explodes.
Fumes explode, raw fuel burns. Igniter will not ignite raw fuel nor would there be anyway to propagate the explosion that took place.
Even if the engine was flooded, and full of water, and the air couldn't, it still wouldn't explode. MD-11 engines run on a fuel that cannot be ignited.
Wrong, the tail section has fuel LINES not a fuel tank.
Continuity mistake: The final sequence of the film has a whole load of stuff different. Just before Chuck walks into the crossroad, we see there's a solid double yellow line on the main road, a dirt track to one side, and another road on the other side - that one has one solid & one dashed line on it. It cuts to a wider shot, and the dashed line has suddenly become solid, the Texas state sign has moved closer to the stop sign, and a big shadow (of a telegraph pole or similar) has appeared next to the stop sign. There's then another cut looking down the adjoining road - Tom Hanks' shadow's done a complete 180, the shadow of the telegraph pole's disappeared, the line's gone dashed again, and the Texas sign's moved away. Basically, in one 20 second clip at least 4 things change significantly - they used two very similar, but not identical junctions, for no good reason. A veritable spot the difference competition! (02:10:30)
Suggested correction: The sun angle does indeed swing wildly from side to side and above during the final scene which moves the shadows around, but it's the same intersection throughout. The dashed line appears to become solid in one of the shots, but the camera angle has changed which makes the dashes longer on the screen, and the other end of the final dash in that line cannot be seen, creating a strong illusion.
Factual error: On Tom Hanks' doomed flight, there is no smoke curtain or solid bulkhead in place. This is a heavy, opaque curtain or solid wall that separates the the topside cargo area from the seating area, designed to keep smoke from a fire away from the crew. On DC10/MD11 aircraft, this is generally a solid bulkhead, and on Airbuses a curtain. This plane should have been grounded until one was installed.
Suggested correction: While some MD-11s at FedEx have a solid bulkhead, most do not and have this 9G net. I don't recall if they starting putting the smoke curtain in before or after they started flying the MD-11, but at one time FedEx only had the 9G net on their aircraft and no curtain.
Revealing mistake: When Kelly is copying her dissertation, there is no paper being fed through the copier feeder or any printed pages going into the output tray. (00:12:40)
Other mistake: In the cave we see Tom Hanks drawing an analemma without a precise timekeeper, which is needed to draw one. What he could have done is a meridian rect, which is build with the meridian time. The analemma is the differential chart between the solar time and civil time.
Suggested correction: No, what we see is Tom Hanks drawing a chalk outline on a wall to approximate the date. There is no reason to assume he got it exactly right or knew exactly what he was doing. He probably started just by drawing lines on the cave wall to mark the days then noticed the light.
I'm afraid "just drawing lines" doesn't create the well-crafted analemma you see in the movie. A very precise time-keeping device is necessary: just a minute off will dramatically change the shape.
