20 Things You Didn't Know About Die Another Day
13. “Looks Like We’re Going Down Together!”
Originally, it was planned that James Bond and Jinx would escape from Graves’s doomed Antonov cargo plane by climbing out of its nose cone and up a rope into a Chinook troop transport helicopter hovering overhead.
However, aerial coordinator Mike Woodley informed the filmmakers that this would not be possible: if a person opened a window on an aircraft travelling at 200 miles per hour and stuck their arm out, the impact would tear their arm clean off.
He therefore suggested that Double-0 Seven and Jinx could bail out of the Antonov’s cargo hold in a helicopter, but the special effects team queried whether that aircraft's tail would be torn away by the air pressure. Woodley recommended using a McDonnell Douglas MD 600N helicopter, which relies upon airflow through its tail boom to stabilise it rather than a conventional tail rotor.