Harrison Ford rose to stardom for his iconic role as Han Solo in George Lucas’ Star Wars franchise. His fame reached all corners of the galaxy, and it gave him a lot of opportunities to collaborate with other actors and directors.
Aside from his credentials as a Hollywood star, he is also an aviator. Ford’s passion for flying has been witnessed by many fans, though he also had a couple of accidents that were almost life-threatening.
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Harrison Ford Shares The Most Humiliating Flying Accident He Has Ever Experienced
Actor Harrison Ford shared one of the most dangerous flying accidents he has experienced in an interview. In March 2015, he suffered from a fracture on his pelvis and shattered a vertebra after crash-landing his open-cockpit plane on a golf course in Venice, California.
They later found out it was the fault of the machine, and fortunately, no other people were hurt. Another accident took place again, and this time, Ford considered it the most humiliating. He told GQ:
“It’s thoroughly embarrassing. Officially, I admitted to two of the common mental processes that can lead a pilot to making a mistake—distraction and fixation. So, I was thinking about a couple of other things. And it was a good landing. In the wrong place.”
Ford landed his plane on the taxiway of John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California instead of the runway. He was returning from a visit to his aunt, and his mind was so occupied at the time. The actor admitted it was his mistake:
“I thought that I would suffer the consequences… I knew I f—ked up. I knew what process I would have to go through. I even knew it would be in the newspapers. I didn’t know it would be for weeks. And that I would be Mike Flynn’s new best friend. Because he was in the sh-tbox, and it took him out of the news cycle.”
As expected, Ford’s mishap headlined the newspapers. It was one event in his flying career that he would never forget.
Harrison Ford Explains Why He Returned To Flying Planes
In his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Harrison Ford reflected on his infamous plane accident that even his wife would not fly with him anymore. He stated:
“My wife does not fly with me in vintage airplanes anymore — she will in others. I certainly don’t want to have to recover from that kind of accident again. It was really hard on my family, and it was hard on me. I went back to flying. I know what happened. So that’s part of the reason [I went back]. There was a mechanical issue with the airplane I could not have known about or attended to in any way. So in the words of the great philosopher Jimmy Buffett: Sh-t happens.”
Despite the accident, the actor still went back to flying. He believes it was not that he lacked the skills of an aviator, but it was a mechanical failure that he just did not know about.
