His report on the airplane - the results were?
Once Paul Newman had a walk with the test pilot, was it ever revealed his findings of the airplane?
shareThat thing was a damned death trap. I hope they didn't put it into production.
shareThe test flight about 45 minutes into the movie is the best part, but then, I'm into airplanes.
The movie does not describe the airplane in detail. It is interesting and probably a careful choice on someone's part that they used a Beechcraft Bonanza. It looked like the original Model 35. It was one of the first post-WW II private aircraft to go into production and was designed to be a high performance aircraft. It had retractable landing gear and a cruise speed near 200 mph. It was also not recommended for novice flyers. It may be best known by non-flyers as the airplane type that crashed on February 3, 1959, killing Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. Richardson, Jr. ("The Big Bopper").
If you watch the movie again note the airplane that they taxi past while returning to the hangar. That is a Cessna 195. It also came out just after the war and was considered the main competition to the Beechcraft 35. The whole sequence lends a bit of realism to the movie: genuine post-war airplanes actually in development at the time period of the story and the one they are test flying was actually controversial.
The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.
Whoops, I jumped on the wrong airplane. That explains your joke. We never see the plane or even hear a description. We don't know if it's a reciprocating engine (probably not), turbo-prop, or turbojet. We don't know if it's a trainer, a transport, or a fighter. Of course, none of that matters. What matters is how Alfred treats the report and why.
The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.