Whiskey Romeo Zulu

Tagline: “Rotten company. The man who resisted. The real story. "( Spanish Una sociedad corrupta. Un hombre que resistió. Una historia real. )

The district attorney is investigating a LAPA aircraft accident and is listening to data from a voice recorder . On the record, the pilots, after reading the checklist, start to disperse when a clearly audible warning signal is heard in the cockpit about the takeoff configuration of the aircraft, but for some reason the crew ignores it. The prosecutor begins to study the documents and discovers individual violations in the airline. However, then the investigators encounter difficulties, as they are “put sticks in the wheels”, and one night the prosecutor survived the attempted murder. All this hints that the causes of the accident should be sought much deeper. Once, a man appears in the door of his office (in the credits is indicated as “T”) with a bundle of documents, from which the prosecutor understands that the violations he found are only the tip of the iceberg.

In the past, he was a pilot of the LAPA low-cost airline company and even managed to rise to the rank of commander , despite the objections of his father, who had once lost his parents in a plane crash. LAPA is experiencing growth in the face of fierce competition, but at the same time it does not keep pace with its growth, which is why pilots have significant processing, or even can not go on vacation for several years. In addition, the manual begins to save on everything, down to the smallest detail, including empty fire extinguishers on board have already become the norm, and the flight instructions are provided in the original English, knowing full well that not all pilots speak it. At the same time, in order to prevent the reduction of flight crews, many pilots are “helped” to pass the test on the simulator, including one of the protagonist’s friends - Gonzalo, who, due to the loan, is forced to “cling” to the post of aircraft commander and essentially turned into a puppet in the hands of superiors. In addition, aircraft are operated with failures that almost go beyond the list of minimum working equipment, and technicians are in no hurry to eliminate these malfunctions in order to avoid prolonged downtime of aircraft, instead often forging documents on repair.

Having become the aircraft commander, T already in the first flight in a new position discovers that he can’t find the Mendoza radio beacon (it was probably disconnected due to electricity debts ^[2] ), because of which he was forced to go to the alternate airport in Cordoba , for that I received a warning from management. The next time during a flight on an airplane, where false information about a fire in the Ukrainian Armed Forces constantly popped up, T during another such message requests an emergency landing at the departure airport and even asks for emergency services, which again angers the Senior Pilot. Gradually, T begins to get used to the existing state of things and flies more tolerantly on deliberately defective airliners, until one day a defect is discovered in one of the flights, which almost led to the destruction of the airliner in the air, and then an airplane with several navigation instruments failed this technician refused to repair them. The protagonist canceled the flight, saying that under such conditions he could not be responsible for the lives of people on board, for which the company hastily changed the flight crew to a new one led by Gonzalo.

Then, out of desperation, T writes a report addressed to the Senior Pilot that such company policy will sooner or later lead to tragedy, after which he sends out copies to several more people. The text he wrote produces resonance, and information on the state of affairs reaches even North America, and The New York Times writes about this. As a result, T is suspended from flying until the end of the month, and then the psychologist at the next physical examination removes him for another six months. Soon, the company changes its leadership, which, according to the main character, returns to flights, but on the condition that he write a new letter, where he mitigates, but actually refutes the violations he described earlier in the airline. The situation for T is complicated by the fact that Marcella Fabbry, his school love, becomes the new communications manager. Marcella is married to another man, but still has warm feelings for the main character. However, he reports that he will not write refutations, and after one-on-one he tries to explain to his beloved woman the whole danger of the current state of affairs, but Marcella in an attempt to keep the company only quarreled with him, saying that it was all between them.

In fact, the main character turns out to be alone against the system, as his school love, colleagues and even friends turn his back on him, so in June 1999, T quit LAPA. A couple of months later, on August 31, 1999, a crew led by Gonzalo aboard a WRZ aircraft performs a regular flight MJ-3142 “ Buenos Aires - Cordoba ”, when the next warning signal is issued during takeoff. By analogy with the parable of the shepherd and wolves, as T warned about, pilots habitually ignore this signal, not suspecting that it is already real. In less than a minute, one of the worst disasters in the history of Argentine aviation occurs - the crash of a Boeing 737 in Buenos Aires .

The final credits are narrated that the prosecutor was able to bring to court the leadership of the airline and the leadership of the Argentine Air Force , creating an unprecedented case in the history of civil aviation.

According to Enrique Pinheiro in an interview, when he was a pilot at LAPA, he repeatedly wrote papers about a dangerous situation inside the company before his dismissal that flagrant violations in aircraft maintenance would one day lead to tragedy. And in 1997, The New York Times ^[2] even referred to one of his letters, which caused a stir in the company ^[3] . On that fateful night, he was sitting with a friend when he found out from the news while watching TV that the LAPA plane could not take off when flying out of Buenos Aires, instead rolled out of the airfield and rushed through the adjacent Kostanera Avenue crashed into a gas distribution station. 64 people died in that crash, including both pilots whom Pinheiro knew well; moreover, he flew twice a month to Cordoba to his parents, including on this flight. Returning home, Enrique collected the documents he had for three days, after which he took them to court. After 10 months, the script for the film was prepared, which was recorded on the anniversary of the crash of flight 3142 - August 31, 2000 ^[4] .

An official investigation conducted by the Argentinean Air Force concluded that the culprits were the pilots who took off with violations and ignored the signal about the flaps not released, but this conclusion did not suit many, including Pinheiro, because the reasons were much deeper. This film is not about the disaster, which was given only a few minutes at the end, he is trying to explain to the audience that the pilots did not violate, but why they did it. Revealing the psychology of pilots, the film explains the motives for which these people continued to work on actually "flying coffins": someone out of a love of flying, and someone because of financial problems. Also, the authors did not want the audience to have aerophobia at all , they only show the danger that existed at that time in the country, when the Air Force controlled civil aviation, and corruption flourished in the LAPA company ^[4] .

The film was shot in secret and took 20 weeks intermittently. Even in Argentina, the entire film crew arrived secretly. The director wanted to get the maximum reliability from the actors, so before the filming process itself, they repeatedly instructed them until they started to do everything at the level of automatism; in particular, the actress playing the role of a stewardess had to close the airplane door 150 times in order to act like a real stewardess in the film, who has been doing this over and over for several years. The shooting itself took place on real simulators and inside real aircraft, and the filmmakers refused to disclose who helped them in this. Also, cameras often had to be masked. This explains why the characters in the film have fictitious names, or they don’t exist at all, including the protagonist indicated in the credits as “T” ^{[5] [6]} .

Prizes ^[3]

2004

• Biarritz International Film Festival - “Best Film”;
• Havana Film Festival - “Best Feature Film Debut”;
• Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival - “Best Film”, “Audience Award”, national film, SIGNIS Award;
• Viña del Mar International Film Festival - “Best Actor”;
• Bahamas International Film Festival - Spirit of Freedom Award, Special Jury Award.

2005

• Latin American Film and Video Festival - Special Jury Award; Association of Best Film Critics Award;
• Latin American Film Festival in Ice - "Best Director".

Nominations ^[3]

2006

• Argentine Film Critics Association - “Silver Condor”, “Best Artist's Work” (Cristina Nigro), “Best Cinematography” (Ramiro Sivita), “Best Editing” (Jacopo Quadri); “Best Film Debut” (Enrique Pinheiro), “Best Original Screenplay” (Enrique Pinheiro), “Best Sound” (Marcos De Aguirr), “Best Supporting Actor” (Alejandro Avada)

After this film, NASA invited Enrique Pinheiro as an expert on aviation and aviation security ^[7] .

• Whiskey Romeo Zulu on the Internet Movie Database  
• Whiskey Romeo Zulu / Whiskey Romeo Zulu (Enrique Pineyro / Enrique Pineyro) (Russian) (October 21, 2014). Date of treatment December 13, 2018.