What do Executive Decision, Marvel’s Daredevil comics, and White Collar all have in common? Aside from being icons in their own right, all feature a particular fictional airline: Oceanic Airlines. All while none are part of the same universe…
Indeed, it seems that whenever pop culture wants to depict a fictional airline, the name they go with is Oceanic Airlines, or sometimes the similar Oceanic Airways, but why exactly is this?
History
But before we can discuss exactly why Oceanic Airlines is used in so many films, TV shows, video games and more, we should probably look at how the fictional airline came to be…
Origins
As aviation became more accessible and more people were exposed to aviation thanks to the postwar aviation boom, pop culture began to feature aircraft on an increasingly frequent basis.
And they weren’t just focusing on military aviation now. In fact, studios were focusing more on private and commercial aviation than they ever had on military aviation. And the public loved it.
There was only one problem: They wanted to make it as realistic as possible, but were constricted at every turn.
You see, when studios were filming scenes to do with commercial aviation, eg. airline scenes, they had to find an airline willing to pay steep advertising fees, which many either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do.
MGM-TV, the makers of the 1960’s TV show, Flipper, found this for themselves, when they wanted to use an airline for their season two episode “The Ditching” so a character could mention in passing how their flight had crashed.
Unable to find an airline whose name they could use, the creators came up with a clever solution: Invent their own airline.
With the show being about a dolphin (called Flipper), its owner, and his two young sons, the creators wanted to give the airline a name that was somewhat related to the show’s premise. They chose Oceanic Airlines as that name.
The episode aired on October 30 1965 and marked the first use of the Oceanic Airlines name in a movie or TV show.
And nothing really happened after that…
Nobody would use the Oceanic Airlines name for nearly a decade until Marvel comics penciler Don Heck chose to feature a cab advertising the airline in a panel on the first page of Daredevil issue #104, published in October 1973.
Executive Decision
And once again, Oceanic Airlines faded into obscurity. Once again, no one would make reference to the fictional airline for 23 years after Daredevil #104. That was, until the Stuart Baird film Executive Decision was released in March 1996.
Starring the likes of Kurt Russell, Halle Berry and Steven Seagal, the entire plot happens onboard an Oceanic Airlines Boeing 747-200 (Flight 343) going from Athens to Washington, DC that is hijacked by terrorists.
Despite its sometimes nonsensical logic and poor editing in places, the film was wildly successful, grossing $122 million compared to a budget of only $55 million and became somewhat of a cult classic.
As for Oceanic Airlines, it became quite literally the most famous fictional airline of its day, perhaps only rivaled by Airplane!’s Trans American Airlines.
So the producers could make some extra money, much of the film’s unused footage was turned into stock footage – including several shots of the aircraft’s exterior, prominently featuring the Oceanic name and logo.
Though you wouldn’t think there would be many takers for this footage, there are a surprising number of movies and TV shows featuring shots of the Oceanic Airlines 747 from Executive Decision. These include:
- Panic in the Skies! (1996 television film)
- Diagnosis: Murder (season 4, episode 23, first aired: April 24 1997)
- JAG (two episodes; season 3, episode 6, first aired: October 28 1997 and season 5, episode 18, first aired February 29 2000)
- Nowhere to Land (2000 television movie)
- After the Sunset (2004 film)
- Category 6: Days of Destruction (2004 miniseries)
- The War at Home (season 1, episode 20, first aired: April 16 2006)
Naturally, this has only helped to turn the Oceanic Airlines name from one few had heard of, to a sort-of household name. Indeed, following Executive Decision’s release, there was a surge in demand for Oceanic Airlines tickets… despite the airline not existing.
Popularization
Aside from those studios who purchased Executive Decision’s stock footage, several studios took their own take on the airline, using its name but changing almost all other aspects – routes, logo, livery and the like.
In many ways, it became the go-to name for any fictional airline in any universe.
From the late 1990’s until the present day, Oceanic Airlines has been used in over 100 different movies and TV shows, even getting a mention in its very first radio special: Cabin Pressure, which aired on December 25 2010.
For the most part, use of the name is restricted mostly to cameos or hidden Easter eggs only to be caught by the most discerning of viewers. Only occasionally is it used to further the plot.
In many cases, these cameos and Easter eggs are a veiled reference to Executive Decision in some way, such as mentioning one of the main characters’ names, or making an allusion to its hijacking.
Though still used in films, the airline continues is more popular with TV shows (such as in an episode of the sixth of White Collar, twice in the ABC sitcom The Goldbergs and more recently in an episode of the BBC drama The Serpent).
It has even seeped into comics too, such as the British title Alex from the 1990’s and Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 8 of the 2010’s.
Lost
All this growing popularity culminated in 2004. That year, ABC starting airing the first episodes of a supernatural/sci-fi drama called Lost, which the airline is crucial to the plot of.
Without spoiling the entire show, Lost explores the aftermath of the crash of Oceanic Flight 815 (a Lockheed Tristar being used in filming, though is stated as a 777 in-universe) that broke into three parts traveling from Sydney to Los Angeles.
To give it the added authenticity factor, the show’s producers even registered the web address oceanic-air.com and created a corresponding website for the airline at that address, with extra clues and references to the show’s plot.
Sadly, when the show ended in 2010, the producers took down the website, though it can still be found in web archives.
The popularity of the show led to a series of deals between the producers and merchandise companies, allowing fans to buy Lost-branded merchandise if they wanted. A videogame, Find 815, was also created thanks to the show’s popularity.
In 2008, as a part of the marketing for the aforementioned videogame, ABC began a viral marketing campaign in several major US cities, placing the airline’s logo on everything from billboards to the backs of vans. This also helped to increase the show’s viewership.
As for the Oceanic Airlines name, 2008 is often seen as its highpoint. The airline was never more famous than in 2008.
Since the show’s end, there have been numerous references to Lost’s Oceanic Airlines and Flight 815 in other shows, ranging from Once Upon a Time (also produced by ABC), to Chuck, to Transformers: Cybertron and more!
A Modern Age
Due in part to it becoming somewhat of a pop culture icon, Oceanic Airlines has been used several times to demonstrate new technologies when they’ve been launched.
When Apple was launching IOS 3.0 in March 2009, Scott Forstall (the engineer behind the IOS) demonstrated the all-new cut and paste features by creating an email which shows the times of a flight he has booked on Lost’s Oceanic Flight 815.
Five years later, Google unveiled its Inbox by Google feature for Gmail. A part of the demonstration, an in-app reminder displayed a flight from San Francisco International Airport to New York’s JFK. The airline used? Oceanic Airlines (the fictional Flight 22).
Then came the video games.
Starting in the early 2010’s, the Oceanic Airlines name, logo and/or aircraft began to be featured in video games as an Easter egg of sorts, often alluding to other times the airline has appeared in pop culture.
Following the end of the first boss fight in the 2011 survival-horror action game, Dead Island, the player can hear a radio dispatch from Oceanic Flight 1012. They can then see the aircraft crash into a jungle and break into three pieces – just as Flight 815 did in Lost.
In the 2013 video game The Wolf Among Us, an Oceanic Airlines advertisement is seen on the roof of a taxi in a similar vein to how one was featured in a panel of Daredevil #104 40 years previously.
Oceanic Airlines features on two occasions in the 2015 video game Supertuxkart, first being seen in the lobby of an island airport and secondly being seen as an advert in a stadium.
Why is Oceanic Airlines Used in so Many Films?
Running Gag
When you watch most of the films/TV episodes featuring the airline, you’ll notice that they almost always feature some sort of crash, hijacking or some other kind of crime. All things real airlines don’t want to be associated with.
Whilst you could use the names of now-defunct airlines, such as Continental in the US, BEA in the UK or Air Inter in France, or still-operational airlines, you run the risk of being sued, either by the airline itself or its successor (eg. United for Continental).
Despite being fiction and designed for entertainment, many people do take what they see in the cinemas and on TV for fact, and won’t fly on an airline they perceive to be unsafe, based solely on the fact a film showed a fictitious crash of one of “their” aircraft.
So using a completely made up airline – one that has long been associated with crashes, hijackings and crime – such as Oceanic makes sense. It’s the airline people subconsciously associate with these things too.
That’s why you’ll hear many film buffs refer to Oceanic as “the airline designed to crash” or “the airline of impending disaster”. Whenever you see or hear their name, you know something bad it going to happen.
In many ways, it’s a running gag used across the film industry to signal something bad is going to happen, all whilst avoiding being sued for libel.
Creative License
For writers and studios today, it can be difficult to write a film about a real life airline. They have to get every detail correct from the choice of food in each class, to the type of in-flight entertainment, and even to how the cabin crew wear their uniform.
Without spending thousands of dollars flying multiple times in all three classes, or the input from the real airline themselves, it’s almost impossible to get everything right.
No matter how much you get right, you can bet that one mistake will be noticed by critics and avgeeks alike. And they won’t let you forget it.
Then there is also the issue of routes.
As with any business that wants to survive, airlines adapt to changing customer demands. This means adding new routes that are more profitable, and removing old ones that aren’t.
Though necessary for these airlines to survive, it can easily make a film look outdated in only a few years. That’s why so many films focus on routes like London (or another major European capital) to New York.
It’s not just to give the plot several hours to develop, it’s because most airlines don’t drop these highly lucrative routes.
Now imagine that you are writing an upcoming film or episode of your favorite TV show and want to show your character traveling from Azerbaijan to Belize.
You could try and find an airline that has a route like that, but there will probably only be a few, and a Western audience won’t have heard of any of them. Now you’ve got to convince them to let you film them; not an easy task.
So why not use Oceanic Airlines instead? It’s a fictional airline most people have heard of that you have creative license to do with as you please.
Perhaps Azerbaijan to Belize is their most popular route, they have a funky logo featuring a dolphin wearing sunglasses and when you board, the cabin crew greet you with “G’day mate” in an Australian accent. It’s totally up to you.
No Free Advertising
When you watch films or TV shows and see your favorite characters flying on an actual airline, the airlines are usually paying for the privilege as they see it as a form of advertising.
Their logic is that if you see the likes of Tom Cruise, Anne Hathaway and Ben Affleck flying first class on someone like British Airways, you’ll be more likely to book your next flight with them.
But airlines aren’t always willing to pay for this privilege. So rather than give them free advertising, studios often use a fictitious airline out of spite. But at the same time, they want the name to seem somewhat familiar but avoid copyright infringement.
So Oceanic Airlines is the name they use!
What do you think about Oceanic Airlines? Should it become even more of a staple or should studios use different fictional airlines? Tell me in the comments!
Featured image courtesy of Pablo via Flickr.