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ETV Presents “The Final Hours: Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight”

ETV Classic Complements Weekend Debut of
Hilary Swank Big Screen Feature “Amelia”

For Immediate Release
September 25, 2009

In May 1937, Amelia Earhart embarked on the most ambitious and dangerous flight of her career: an attempt to fly around the world at the Equator. Six weeks later, she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared without a trace somewhere in the South Pacific.

On Sunday, Oct. 25 at 3 p.m., ETV broadcasts “The Final Hours: Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight.” Airing during the opening weekend of “Amelia”-- the new movie starring Academy Award-winning actress Hilary Swank -- ETV’s production takes viewers on a journey around the world in a vintage Lockheed Electra, recreating Earhart’s 1937 world flight and revealing the woman behind the legend.

The hour-long program uses Earhart’s diaries and logbooks to tell the true story of her life and her last flight in her own words. Interviews with aviation experts help viewers understand what may have happened on the legendary aviator’s ill-fated final flight.

The documentary also offers a solution to the mystery of Earhart’s disappearance. Navigator Bowen Weisheit flew the waters of the South Pacific during WWII and studied at the Weems School, the same school that Earhart’s navigator, Fred Noonan, attended. An expert in the navigational tools and methods used by Noonan, Weisheit offers his theory of what went wrong on their last flight - a theory validated by the on-camera experts from the National Air and Space Museum. His scholarly supposition hinges on a fundamental disagreement between Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan.

ETV Classics is a special series of programs helping ETV celebrate its 50th anniversary. Airing on Sundays at 3 p.m., these vintage programs mark pivotal moments or profile key players in our state’s history. The collection also features landmark productions that helped establish ETV as one of the premiere public broadcasters in the nation.

South Carolina ETV is the state's public educational broadcasting network with 11 television and eight radio transmitters, and a multi-media educational system in more than 2,500 schools, colleges, businesses and government agencies. Using television, radio and the web, SCETV's mission is to enrich lives by educating children, informing and connecting citizens, celebrating our culture and environment and instilling the joy of learning.

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For more information, contact Rob Schaller at (803) 737-6556 or rschaller@scetv.org.

Aviator Amelia Earhart: "The Final Hours: Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight”