Goofs

After the crash, the crew poke a hole in the top of the plane to let in some air because the plane is totally covered by sand. Yet during the burial in the next scene the plane is mostly uncovered.

After sand storm that killed Davis there are still many many footprints around the graves. These would have been wiped out during the storm.

As they are taxiing for take off they go through the checklist and go through the windows, hatches and doors and announce that they are all closed and secured. In the next shot from outside the airplane all the windows in the cockpit are wide open.

The registration number of the C119 at the beginning of the movie is H0180-H. This changes to H0181-H in some shots during the storm.

When Rodney gets shot, he is shot on the right side of his chest. However, when they lay him on the cargo box and tear his shirt to reveal it, the wound is on the left side of his chest.

The nomads have dromedary camels which are native to Arabia whereas the Bactrian camel is native to the Gobi desert.

If the "nomads" / arms dealers had been using the crash victim's body for target practice (as suggested by the captain), the spent shells would have been found near where the shooters had been standing - not near the body as depicted in the film.

Though the C-119 used in this film is a direct descendant of the C-82 used in the original, the engines of the C-119 were started by power from an APU, not using the Coffman cartridge start system of the original.

When the rear cargo doors come off after hitting the terrain, the contents of the cabin, as well as a passenger, are shown to be violently 'sucked out'. The aircraft is not pressurized, so this could not be due to a great pressure differential between the cabin and the outside atmosphere. The mere fact that the door is open does not create a massive suction or draft, as is evident by military cargo and paratroop drops made from rear exit aircraft. Thus, while it might get noisy, and things might get shaken out, they would not get sucked out in this manner.

The crash survivors would not be leaning against a scorching hot plane fuselage in the blazing desert sun. They would seek shade.

After the crash when Kelly is resting on the side of a sand dune and hears two shots behind her, it is still daytime. When the others take a look, it is nighttime as you can see some stars behind them in the sky and of course the darkness about them. They seemed to be eager to go, yet it couldn't have taken them that long to get up there. They had to wait until dark to watch with their binoculars. In sunlight, the glare off the lens of the binoculars would give their position away. When Rodney gets shot it's still nighttime, yet when they bring him back to the plane afterward it's like midday.

When Davis disappears, he is shown to leave the aircraft at night to urinate and then he immediately trips and falls down a steep embankment before wandering off in the dark. As the surrounding area of the plane is later shown several times with no embankment anywhere near it, Davis would have had to first walk many hundreds of feet uphill in the dark away from safety in order to die the way it is depicted.

The prevailing wind after the crash is said to be blowing at 70 mph but, just before the plane came to a stop, there was clear weather and the dust cloud from the crash hardly blew with the wind.

When I leave my car out on a fairly sunny day, the metal parts of the seatbelt and the outside of the car become very hot. The temperatures and sunlight in this condition is nowhere near that of the Gobi Desert. There is no way they would be touching and sitting on the metal plane that had been sitting in the desert exposed to the blazing sun for weeks.

During Towns' conversation with A.J. he talks about finding Liddell in the desert and how there were shell casings around the body giving it the appearance as though someone were using it as "target practice". If this were true the casings would be elsewhere: if they were having target practice the casings would fall near the shooter, not near the target.

Early in the crash sequence, the plane is doing barrel-rolls. A.J.'s unconscious body, which is unsecured, should have been rolling around. His body can been seen unmoving lying in the same spot even after other loose items have been thrown around.

About halfway through the film, when Rady is telling the cook, Sammi, a joke about a Rabbi and a Priest, a crew member is clearly visible walking up and standing behind some webbing to the left of the screen (inside the plane).

The sands and the mountains shown around the crash site setting of the film clearly indicate that it is not being filmed in the Gobi Desert. Additionally, the nighttime weather and temperatures are not as they would in the northerly Gobi, which is located between the 43th and 45th parallels, placing it north of Vancouver, BC. The Gobi is a mostly an exposed rock, and not a sandy, desert. And, with a few exceptions, it is also relatively flat.

The plane not arriving would have provoked a search. While it would have been difficult and treacherous, the Gobi Desert is the location of several highly classified Chinese military installations, meaning that discovering the location and disposition of any aircraft that disappeared from radar would have been paramount. Simply sitting and waiting would have been enough to get the group rescued.

The Captain is hailed as an extraordinary pilot who manages to save an aircraft that "not many pilots could save". However, at the time of the initial engine failure, he takes absolutely no action to shut down the engine or to feather the propeller.

When speaking to Elliot, Captain Towns refers to the engine as having "more than 2,000 pounds of thrust". The C-119 has reciprocating radial engines, which are not rated in pounds of thrust as jet engines are. The C-119 had either the Pratt & Whitney R-4360-20 engine producing 3,500 Horsepower, or the Wright Cyclone 3350-85 engine producing 2,500 horsepower. No professional pilot would confuse the two.