“WGN News received a number of viewer phone calls and tweets about an airplane crash on King Drive. Our helicopter was close by and was the first news helicopter to arrive on the scene. Based on police radio traffic, several officers in the area were similarly alarmed that there was a plane crash. We contacted Chicago Police, Chicago Fire, and the FAA seeking information. All of those public agencies said they had no knowledge of a plane crash. But none of them said that it was a scene from a movie,” commented Greg Caputo, WGN-TV News Director.

“Our previous experience with movies and TV shows filming in Chicago is that they inform the community that something is happening. A fire department spokesman later admitted that the information regarding the filming as not distributed widely enough. Since we had no such advisory, our news team began to describe the scene they could see from our helicopter shot. Other major stations in Chicago were on network news at that time. Less than two minutes later, while still covering the event, we learned that this was for a television show. Our anchors quickly announced that everything was all right and our irreverent morning news team quickly switched gears making fun of themselves with self-deprecating humor.”

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