After yet another risky and nearly fatal flight that Pete casually shrugs off, Al suggests he accept a safer job training firefighting pilots in Flat Rock, Colorado.

Pete makes a dangerously steep dive and skillfully douses Al's engine with a fire-retardant slurry, saving him.

As Pete struggles to regain control from the dive, he flies directly through the forest fire, igniting his engine and causing the aircraft to explode.

Coming to a small clearing, he meets Hap, who explains Pete died in the explosion and now has a new purpose: As spirits did for him during his lifetime, he will provide Spiritus ("the divine breath") to guide others who will interpret his words as their thoughts.

He takes her with him to Colorado to work at the flight school where Pete is to lead pilots who will be training to fight fires, one of which is Ted Baker.

Pete attempts to sabotage the budding romance, but Hap reminds him that his life ended; he was sent to inspire Ted but also to bid Dorinda farewell.

Steven Spielberg confided that while making Jaws in 1974, he and Richard Dreyfuss had traded quips from A Guy Named Joe, considered a "classic" war film, that they both wanted to remake.

[5] Originally intended to be an MGM project, the film underwent a protracted 10-year gestation, with Tom Cruise reputedly being considered for the Ted Baker role.

"[5] For Spielberg, who recalled seeing it as a child late at night, "it was one of the films that inspired him to become a movie director,"[5] creating an emotional connection to the times that his father, a wartime air force veteran had lived through.

Principal photography began on May 15, 1989; production took place in northwestern Montana in the Kootenai National Forest, with some scenes filmed in and around Libby.

[17] A number of other aircraft also appeared in Always: Aeronca 7AC Champion, Bellanca 8KCAB Super Decathlon, Beechcraft Model 18, Cessna 337 Super Skymaster, Cessna 340, Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina, de Havilland Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otter, Douglas C-54 Skymaster, Fairchild C-119C Flying Boxcar, McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and North American B-25J Mitchell.

The website's critics consensus reads: "Its central romance takes occasional dives into excessive sentimentality, but Always otherwise flies high thanks to director Steven Spielberg's rousing feel for adventure.

[21] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times considered it "dated" and more of a "curiosity," calling it Spielberg's "weakest film since his comedy 1941".