Hundreds of fans and friends of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher packed an auditorium for a public memorial honoring the celebrated mother and daughter. The ceremony honored the duo’s careers at the storied Hollywood Hills cemetery of Forest Lawn Memorial Park where they were laid to rest. The ceremony’s program featured a photo of Fisher as a young girl holding her mother’s hand on stage. A drawing of Fisher in a Princess Leia gown and Reynolds in a rain slicker hugging each other was displayed on a giant projector screen before the ceremony, and a pair of directors’ chairs with the actresses’ names on them were on stage. Reynolds’ son, Todd Fisher, wrote in a message that his mother and sister loved a good party and that Saturday’s ceremony was intended to be a be a celebration they would like.
Actor Harrison Ford said he was distracted and concerned about turbulence from another aircraft last month when he mistakenly landed on a taxiway at a Southern California airport after flying low over an airliner with 116 people aboard, according to an audio recording released Friday. “I’m the schmuck who landed on the taxiway,” Ford told an air traffic controller shortly after the near-miss on Feb. 13 at John Wayne Airport in Orange County. Recordings of Ford’s conversations with air traffic controllers were released Friday by the Federal Aviation Administration. The 74-year-old actor was told to land his single-engine plane on Runway 20L, but he instead landed on a parallel taxiway. An American Airlines flight was on the same taxiway, waiting to take off. A video released last month showed Ford’s Aviat Husky plane from behind as it descended toward the airfield where the American Airlines Boeing 737 was slowly taxiing. In a phone call with an air traffic controller after the incident, Ford said he “got distracted by the airliner” and also mentioned “big turbulence” from another plane that was landing. The American Airlines flight, with 110 passengers and six crew members, departed safely for Dallas a few minutes later. Landing on a taxiway, instead of a runway, is a violation of Federal Aviation Administration regulations. The agency’s probe of the incident is still underway, spokesman Ian Gregor said Friday.