It shouldn't be too surprising that real-life (and fictional) airline disasters and tragedies have made frequent fodder for movies, both cinematic and made for television. The 1989 film FIRE AND RAIN falls into the latter category.
This film, which first aired on September 13, 1989, recounts the true-life events that unfolded on August 2, 1985 in Dallas. On that day, Delta Airlines Flight 191, bound from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Los Angeles was coming into Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on its single stop on the route when it flew into an isolated thunderstorm hovering very close by the field. The storm created what was then a largely unknown (by the public) phenomenon known as "wind shear", or "microburst", which caused the plane to slam into the ground just slightly more than a mile north of the outer perimeter of the DFW airfield. Of the 152 passengers and eleven crew members onboard, 137 died and twenty-eight survived. One person on the ground was also killed, the driver of a Toyota Celica whose car was hit by the plane. It was one of the worst aircraft mishaps in U.S. history up to that time, and it led to modifications in all aircraft whereby their radar could detect microbursts and wind shears of the kind that bought down Delta 191, as well as the kind of thunderstorm that caused them; at the time, it could only detect the actual presence of the storm itself.
Although it is no more a standout kind of film than a lot of other films of its type, directed as it is by disaster film specialist Jerry Jameson (who also did AIRPORT '77 and STARFLIGHT ONE), FIRE AND RAIN does boast a very good cast that includes Charles Haid, Angie Dickinson, Tom Bosley, John Beck, Dick Christie, Robert Guillaume, Susan Ruttan, David Hasselhoff, and Patti LaBelle. And while certain elements of this film's retelling aren't exactly completely accurate, the makers were quite wise to cast many of the very same firefighters and paramedics ("first responders", in today's jargon) who were at the scene of the actual crash on that stormy August afternoon in 1985; their presence adds a certain verisimilitude the film might otherwise not have had had they decided to cast big-name stars. The actual on-location shooting in Dallas and nearby Irving in Texas adds some more realism to the proceedings.
FIRE AND RAIN won't set the television movie genre on its ear, but it does well what it had intended to do, even with a few flaws.
