The Awful Accident Which Happened While Filming Tom Cruise’s ‘American Made

In the 2017 film American Made, Tom Cruise’s audacious portrayal of pilot Barry Seal took a fatal turn while in production.

Any movie fan not living under a rock is well aware of Tom Cruise’s affinity for aviation. Having attained a pilot’s license in 1994, the 60-year-old actor has put his skills to jaw-dropping use in several films, most dangerously in the Mission: Impossible films and Top Gun: Maverick. While his role as Pete Mitchell in the latter film and its predecessor remain iconic portrayals of a pilot, his performance as a flying daredevil in another film – American Made – also deserves praise.

In 2017’s American Made, Tom Cruise played real-life pilot Barry Seal, a man who would turn to drug smuggling in the 1980s. Featuring many aerial sequences and high-altitude stunts, many of which were performed by the actor himself, the film’s production was beset by tragedy on September 11, 2015.

Carrying three pilots working on the film, Carlos Berl, Jimmy Lee Garland, and Andrew Purwin, a twin-engine Aerostar 600 crashed while en route through the Colombian Andes. The accident resulted in two deaths and severe lifelong injuries sustained by the sole survivor. But how did such an accident happen? And who would answer to the grieving loved ones filing lawsuits with charges of negligence?

Who Were Pilots Carlos Berl, Jimmy Lee Garland, & Andrew Purwin?

Having grown up among aviators in Venezuela, Carlos Berl followed in his family’s footsteps and became a pilot himself. Eventually relocating to Florida and New York, he amassed a variety of licenses over the years, and in 2015, caught wind of an upcoming Tom Cruise-starring film looking for experienced pilots. Won over by the opportunity, but with a constant eye toward safety, Berl voiced concerns after learning the production wanted him to fly the Aerostar 600, an aircraft with which he had no experience and was infamous among aviators for its involvement in “more than 260 deaths in 191 accidents around the world since 1969.”

A native of Georgia, Jimmy Lee Garland had also never worked on a film. But as a pilot and mechanic running his own aviation company and teaching lessons, his knowledge and experience put him on Hollywood’s radar. In addition to serving as Tom Cruise’s double, Garland also taught the actor how to fly a Cessna 414, noting that his student “liked to participate in the stunts” and was “a very good pilot.” The month before the crash, Garland was in Colombia putting his skills to use, racking up many hours in flight and enjoying the good life in the hotels and casinos of Medellín.

Unlike Berl and Garland, however, Andrew Purwin’s aviation record was not without controversy. Particularly known in the industry for performing helicopter stunts, and having worked on high-profile films like Pirates of the Caribbean, Tropic Thunder, and Transformers, he’d cultivated a reputation among colleagues as a “dangerous” and risk-taking pilot. Purwin was also well-known to the Federal Aviation Administration, though perhaps not for the most reassuring reasons. In 1996, he crashed a helicopter that resulted in the death of a business partner, and would eventually be prohibited from flying fixed-wing aircraft in certain “weather and regulatory conditions.” Purwin was involved in “dozens of incidents” over the years, and according to some in Hollywood’s aviation circles, was even a member of the so-called “death pool,” a group composed of pilots considered likely to lose their lives in a plane crash.

What Happened on the Set of ‘American Made’?

As cameras were rolling on American Made in Colombia, Berl, Garland, and Purwin were tasked with flying the twin-engine Aerostar 600 from Santa Fe de Antioquia to Medellín after a long day of filming. Embarking on what should’ve been a 35-mile flight lasting just 20 minutes, the trio took off around 5:30 P.M., only moments after Tom Cruise had departed the set in a helicopter. According to initial reports, the Aerostar encountered bad weather and crashed near the village of La Clarita.

Upon discovering the wreckage, local civilians found all three pilots alive, though severely injured. But after summoning help and returning to the downed plane, Carlos Berl and Andrew Purwin had perished. The lone survivor, Jimmy Lee Garland, suffered “a shattered vertebra, collapsed lung, herniated diaphragm, 10 broken teeth, broken ribs, a broken jawbone, and a cracked skull on both sides of a dislodged eye socket.” Waking up in a hospital nine days after the crash, Garland would later claim to have no memory of the flight, who was flying, or how the plane went down.

What Happened After the ‘American Made’ Set Accident?

Many questions were being asked after the tragedy in the Colombian mountains. How could three experienced pilots, each of whom had logged hours over the dramatic terrain of South American jungles and rainforests, end up crashing on a routine flight? What kinds of safety guidelines and industry regulations did the film’s production have in place to avoid such an accident? What, if any, external factors may have contributed to what happened? And perhaps the most crucial question of all, who was flying the plane? With survivor Johnny Lee Garland unable to remember anything about the flight and its demise, it appears the question of who was flying the Aerostar will never be answered.

The loved ones of Carlos Berl and Andrew Purwin filed lawsuits, each citing negligence on the part of the film production and making claims regarding shortcuts taken at the expense of overall safety. Filed a year after his death, the suit on Berl’s behalf alleged that American Made‘s producers, as well as his fellow co-pilots, pressured him into piloting the notorious Aerostar that he’d not been trained to fly. Filed in April 2016, the lawsuit on Purwin’s behalf made similar allegations against the film’s producers and flight coordinators, claiming that Berl was flying the plane and his inexperience contributed to the crash. For their part, the producers filed a countersuit against Purwin, claiming that his aviation company, Heliblack, supplied the film production with a compromised plane and that the pilot had been dishonest about his qualifications.