A classic, no doubt, but I had not seen it for a while. The convergence of late 1960s film style and aviation is rich. "Trans Global Airlines" The "Commander's Club." The "Golden Argosy Flight No. 2" to Rome from Chicago "Lincoln International Airport." In one scene, Burt Lancaster is arguing with an airport commissioner, and on display is a Boeing 2707 SST in TWA livery!

All the best lines were delivered by George Kennedy, "Joe Patroni from TWA:"

"The only thing this airplane can't take is a bad pilot!"

"That's one nice thing about the 707, it can do everything but read."

that is one great movie. i am still waiting to buy my own copy. when i borrowed it from a freind i watched it over and over and over again. 

I think it was filmed in Minneapolis. One of the blonde stews "onboard" was a real stew for AA her name was Patti Poulsen.

Great film! And, unlike most airline flicks, were very accurate in regard to the aircraft. A Boeing 707 on the outside and an actual Boeing 707 cabin! I've watched too many mile high thrillers where the cabin was Airbus, the plane at the departing airport was an L1011 and then a Boeing 737 as the flick climaxed toward its dramatic conclusion. There were several black and white cinematic tour de forces from the shaboom Leave It To Beaver era that were supposed to be jets but, featured DC-7 cabins and DC-6 outside shots! One of my favourite fopaux was the title of a movie from that afore mentioned era called "Jet Over The Atlantic." Excuse me folks, this was a prop all the way! If one wanted to fudge the truth, they could have referred to a Lockheed Electra but, I don't know of any non stop trans Atlantic hops on a turbo prop jet Electra.    

Hadn't watched it in awhile myself, and did so tonight as well...

Did notice a couple of things...

1/ When Burt Lancaster gives his little speech to the commissioner about their not having spent any money on airport construction, there was a map of an airport behind him. When this movie first came out (1970), Houston's Intercontinental had just opened right around the same time, and it's layout of both runways and terminals was that of the picture in the move, with the exception of IAH not having a south parallel runway. Years later, IAH now has that south parallel runway as shown in the 1970 movie, and in fact, has another parallel runway on the north side. It appears the movie producers had a map of the IAH Master Plan (as it existed back then).

2/ A couple of technical gaffes. When they were on their way back after the guy blew himself up, there were a couple of ATC handoffs, and the frequencies given were 117.5 and 117.1. The last time I looked, 108.0-118.0 were used for navaids, and 118.0-136.975 were the voice freqs. In other words, the frequencies used in the movie handoffs were navaids, and not voice freqs...

Still a great flick, despite Deano's acting in some scenes....  

As has been mentioned before in other posts, the vast majority of the extras in "Airport" were actual airline employees stationed at Minneapoli-St Paul's International Airport, where the movie happened to be filmed.

Iflewrepublic

I once saw a thread here about the history of the 707 used in the film. I did a search and couldn't find it though.

Any info on it would be appreciated.

The following statement is from http://www.airodyssey.net/articles/movie-airport.html

The REAL aircraft
N324F, a Boeing 707-349C (msn/ln 19354-503), was delivered to Flying Tiger Line on June 21, 1966. Since then, it had the following registries: EI-ASO, VH-EBZ, G-BAWP, 9J-AEC, S2-ACG, and finally PT-TCS, on Transbrasil Airlines. Sadly, on March 21, 1989, it crashed while making a final approach at São Paulo-Guarulhos Airport. The three occupants of this freight flight, plus 18 people on the ground died.

dean martin was the man........had a hottie girlfriend.....albeit pregnant

This should be the bird.

View Large View Medium Photo © Pedro Aragão

View Large View Medium Photo © Kjell nilsson

A Boeing 707 on the outside and an actual Boeing 707 cabin!

Actually not. The interior shots were a mockup (a very realistic one) and some of the exterior shots of N324F stuck in the snow are also fake. The best way to tell if an airplane in the movies is fake is to look for all of the latches and stops in the entrance doorway. A couple of movies that used actual interiors include Delta Force (N778PA) and the Langoliers (a TW L-1011).

1) Exterior shots of people climbing up the ladder into the stuck 707- Fake Plane.

2) Shot of Landing Gear coming out of the snow- Fake Gear.

3) Shot of 707 driving out of snow- Real airplane

4) Shot of 707 starting engines in snow- Real airplane

I did catch one new mistake last night......The aft galley exit door handle was in the "open" position during flight.

"Airport" is a great film all around. I purchased the DVD a year ago and it has had several screenings for friends who never saw it. They absolutely loved it.
It's a classic, no doubt about that.

Jacqueline Bisset as Trans Global Airlines senior stewardess Gwen Meighen gets my vote as the best fictional FA of all time......hmmm, okay, perhaps not ZE best, but she was absolutely gorgeous in that grey and yellow form fitting uniform. This dame had both a bun in the galley oven and inside her, courtesy of Dino. She LOOKED like an FA. And of course we had good ole swooning Dino boy as Captain Vernon Demerest, suave, rugged, and surprisingly sober while commanding Flight 2, The Golden Argosy, non-stop B707 service from Lincoln International to........aaaaaaah, ROMA, where he and Gwen were to have their 3 day romantic tryst in Napoli (Tell me their fellow crew members wouldn't clue in? Tongues wag and talk in the crew centre, Gwen and Vern!).

"Vern, do you remember that layover we had in San Francisco, where we stayed at that hotel on Nob Hill? Well, I suppose I was rather careless, and forgot to take precautions". Ummm Hmmmmm. Indeed, Gwen, indeed. Tell THAT to your stew supervisor. And as a senior stew, you are to be an example to the fresh birds joining the line? Tch tch tch.

And I also loved the Drama Queen performance of Burt Lancaster's neglected wife, Cindy. "You care more about this DAMN airport than you do me!"
"You PROMISED you'd attend my charity function, all the other husbands make a point of attending, but not you, you're so wrapped up in this DAMN AIRPORT!" These lines being uttered as she is dressed, made up and coiffed like a true sophisticated bitch. Love it.

One person in this film who doesn't seem to get praise for their performance is Maureen Stapleton, that wonderful actress who portrayed Van Heflin's long suffering wife. It was an excellent performance. And was it just me or did Trans Global Airlines pax agent supervisor Tanya Livingston (the cool beauty Jean Seberg) seem to always be in the pivotal location during the airborne drama, totally neglecting her duties and the pax on other TG flights? LOL.

Aside from all that, the one thing that bothered me was the fact that the economy/coach class cabin mock-up interior of Flight 2 had an aisle that, to me was a tad too wide. You will especially notice this when the camera is mounted above looking down into the cabin.

If you haven't had the opportunity to see "Airport", do so. Yeah, it's got cheese, sleaze and tease, but it's a damn good civil aviation film. Also, read the novel by Arthur Hailey, which is excellent, timeless and the best of uts kind.

I agree with all of you,, they dont make aviation movies like this one. But
id have to say my real thrill is watching that 707 scream, and twist trying to get out of the snow ! Pure classic.

The book was excellent as well, and the movie follows the book closely for the most part in what it covers. The movie leaves out many things like Mel Bakersfield's suicidal brother who is an ATC, the catering truck stuck in the snow, dealing with airport vendors, and the extensive plotline involving the Meadowood residents and Eliot Freemantle, their attorney (leads to a great speech by Mel toward the end). I believe the stuck B707 in the book was a Mexican airline, bound for Acapulco, and people deplane in the snow wearing clothes for warm weather.

In the book, it's more obvious that Mel and Tonya are having an affair... and it goes into detail on the affair that Cindy (Mel's wife) is having. Plus, in the book, everybody hates Vernon Demerest... he's a real ass. The other pilots hate him especially. The only semblence of those exchanges in the movie is the scene where they discuss the regulation shirt. In the book, Vernon sees that Anson Harris isn't wearing one, and makes him go find one from another pilot before departure. Also turns out in the book that Vernon has knocked up stewardesses before and actually has a child, as the stew decided not to take part in the "PPP" plan the airline offers for abortions, but rather had the child and put it up for adoption.

HEy


i just got the airport pack! the concorde and the airport 77 are aswome!

1) Exterior shots of people climbing up the ladder into the stuck 707- Fake Plane

I'm not so sure. If you watch the forward door close, you'll see that is comes inward and then closes. Most fake airliners just have a door that closes regularly, like it shutting an entrance, rather than sealing a hole.

If a film company has a 707 at it's disposal, then why not utilize it as much as you can? Why build a fake aircraft, when you can use the real thing?

However, the shot of the 707 ascending out of the clouds was definitely a model. You can see the wires.

It was big budget movie, but not big enough to take the real 707 up to film air shots.

I agree with Canadi>n Boy - it is the best of it genre. One other film comes close: Skyjacked (1972), based on the book by David Harper. Both are very good; the film has great scenes (inside, outside, in the air) of a 707-373 - this time a World Airways bird. I recommend both.

Flying Tiger Line pilots and flight attendants flew the 707 used in the film from LAX to MSP with the actors and many of the tech people onboard. At the end of the week, the plane would ferry the same people back to L.A. for the weekend. This routine continued for several weeks.

The 707's tail was painted in the colors of "TGA", but the Flying Tiger cheat line was kept intact.

I didn't join Tigers until 1974, but employees still talked about being involved in the making of the film. The 707's were all out of the fleet by then, replaced with stretch DC8's.

One of the blonde stews "onboard" was a real stew for AA her name was Patti Poulsen.

Hmmmm, Patti Poulsen was a real hottie.

Flying Tiger Line pilots and flight attendants flew the 707 used in the film from LAX to MSP with the actors and many of the tech people onboard. At the end of the week, the plane would ferry the same people back to L.A. for the weekend. This routine continued for several weeks.

Flight attendants? Ferrying people?

That must have been one luxurious and unique cargo jet.

Flying Tiger line at one time had a passenger charter division.

Well, of course I am also a fan of the airport series (hence my user name   )

If I remember right I read in a book about the Flying tiger line that the impressive landing of the 707 was actually a bit more dramatic than it was supposed to be. According to the author, the aircraft was actually skidding and blew some tires upon landing. The film crew was quite happy with the results though and didn't ask for a reprise...

Cheers,

Tom... eeh, sorry : Joe

As a matter of fact, my friends and I just finished watching "Airport" again. It wasn't on our line-up of films, but we thought what the hey? It's hard to watch "Airport" and not giggle/laugh at the many scenes/dialogue etc which were turned to spoof/satire in "Airplane!" Joe Patroni saved the day, as usual.

Earlier, we watched "Come Fly With Me", which is actually a pretty good 1960's film about the romantic goings-on of a particular flight deck and cabin crew (Polar Atlantic Airways) of a JFK-CDG-JFK B707 run. Great cabin service shots. The amorous adventures of the flight deck and cabin crew in both Paris and Vienna are cheesy and stretch the imagination, but overall, the film was pretty damn good. It's quite fun to watch, actually. If you can find this film on ebay, then I highly reccomend it.

I agree with Fanojets, "Skyjacked" (1972) is a great film and offers fantastic aerial footage and interior shots of the B707.

"Flying Tiger Line at one time had a charter passenger division"

Actually, for it's entire life, from 1945 until 1989, Flying Tigers maintained a passenger division. After their '89 purchase of FTL, Federal Express continued to operate passenger charters until September, 1992.

Yeah the "Airport Pack" I guess is the way to go, for those who haven't got any of the Airport movies DVDs yet, noticed it on the shelves in one of the downtown stores last week , and sure looks interesting (also quite reasonably-priced too, like a lot of DVD releases nowadays) :

http://www.dvdplanet.com/product_listing.asp?productid=37963&format=DVD


I guess there'll be a "non-region 1" release for it as well , sometime soon


Been many years since I've seen any of those increasingly-cheesy movies, the last three of 'em especially should be more of a laugh now, than ever.

I just remembered a small detail that I thought was kinda cool.

When the 707 was came out of the snow, the scene cut to the view from the cockpit. I'm assuming that the cockpit itself was a set. Anyway, the film backdrop that was running out of the front windows was running too fast. No big airliner could turn that quickly or sharply.

However, when Partoni killed the throttles, the analogue gauges on the front panel immediately went to 0. Nice touch. Even though the backdrop should have depicted a slower turn.

SpeedbirdHeavy, funny you mention the fast turn of the B707. We watched the film a couple of hours ago and commented on the very same thing. Also, if you notice, the same footage is used for the B707 take-off (one at the beginning of the film - not Flight 2, the other Flight 2 takeoff from Lincoln). As well, the film in both instances is speeded up, hence that B707 really lifts off fast, too fast.

I watched Airport as well after not seeing it for several years. My all time favourite! That was the movie that got me my first flying lesson!
I never noticed before how old fashioned everything looked. Overhead shelving in the cabin, rather than bins, the pilots uniforms looked very "heavy" compared to the ones we wear today, especially those coats! The old fiberglass seats in the departure lounges....
I was married to one of those "society queens" like Cindy in the movie. After a few years we split. One of the main reasons was she liked having a pilot for a husband, but didn't like the hours away from home. It comes with the territory. She made the fatal mistake of asking me "It's either me or those damn airplanes!". Guess who won? It's a sad commentary on the avaition lifestyle. Most pilots I know are divorced at least once!
Zippyjet... You are showing your age. I rememeber seeing "Jet Over the Atlantic" in the movie theaters probably around 1961 or so... I have NEVER seen it played on television. Maybe because it was so bad???

Regarding the scene of the stuck aircraft accelerating,the book states the aircraft accelerated quickly after coming out of the trenches,so maybe they are going by what the author of the book stated.

Is it me,or did the gate area in the movie remind anyone else of days when UA was located in T2 at ORD. Brought back memories of old T2.

The movie was filmed at MSP,does the real MSP terminal and concourse look that much different from what we saw in the movie? In the movie you can see a terminal that has a white roof......what terminal is that at MSP?

Thats what the terminal looked like in 69, the year of filming. The best exterior shot is the very end. You see some NW planes and a Braniff one 11 taxiing past.
That would be that red plane. The interior was shot in front of the NW ticket counter but a fake counter was built opposite the real NW counter. This way they could film extras at the fake counter and real pax on the same pan shot. The fake counter was built between the terminal entrance doors, as I stated directly across from the NW counter. Remember, this was 1969 when this was filmed. In the outside shots of the crew bus and airline employees working to
clear the runway, real airline people were used and they wore their company jackets. You see a good number of CO jackets. I read that after the Airport movies were filmed, actor George Kennedy kept his TWA jacket and hat as keepsakes.
He liked playing Joe Petroni.
safe

I can't believe that NO ONE has commmented on THE standout performance of the entire movie.......

Ada Quonsett is a HOTTIE!!!!  

With a heartfelt tip of the hat to the First Lady of the American Stage (we miss you, Helen),


Mike

I still say good job on getting the aircraft right... One gets tired of watching people walk onto an L1011, taxi out in a 737, fly on a 747 and land in a DC-8. In this case they got on a 707, flew in a 707, and landed in a 707.



CanadianNorth

Airport 1975 was waaaaaay better. Great airborne photography of the 747 in the mountains and so many baaaaad actors. Charlton Heston, the singing nun, cross-eyed Karen Black, Mr. Roper from Three's Company, the girl from the Exorcist, Efrem Zimbalist...

'Airplane' sort of combined a parody of the 'Airport!' movies whilst at the same time parodying ( and almost exactly copying in some parts) the movie 'Zero Hour' which actually DID have lines about finding someone to fly this plane who didnt have fish for dinner and the doctor coming in before the landing attempt to wish them good luck, not to mention a character named Ted Stryker (Dana Andrews! who was in Airport '75- and the excellent The Best Years of Our Lives) who had war flashbacks. Dont think he drove a cab though  

One Friday night last fall ( i have a life! haha) TCM played Airport, Zero Hour, and Airplane all in a row commercial free. According to the old man announcer who is George Clooneys dad- the Zuckers who wrote Airplane actually bought the rights to Zero Hour so they could "borrow" as much as they needed to. I really recommend watching the two of them back to back because its absolutely hilarious to see that old movie in the beginning of real passenger service and the "concerns" of passengers at the time. Priceless dialogue! "looks like i picked the wrong week to quit drinking"!

I just got the Terminal Pack, with great excitement I might add. The thing that lets Airport down badly is the lack of air-to-air footage (and the mocked-up stuff with the model and dry ice is astonishingly poor). Even The Concorde: Airport 79 has some great air-to-air stuff.

I saw "Jet Over the Atlantic" recently on either AMC or TCM. The aircraft, if I remember correctly, was a Bristol Britannia. I also saw "Zero Hour," which is so much like "Airplane" that it is scary. I taped it, and watched "Airplane" right after it to compare.

Bob Bradley
Richmond, VA

This is a classic airplane movie, one of my all time favorites. Airport 1975 was also a great flick, but the others were really cheezy, a 747 underwater and a Concorde that you can roll upside down?? Come on! Don't get me wrong, all of the airport movies are a proud part of my collection.

I'm not so sure. If you watch the forward door close, you'll see that is comes inward and then closes. Most fake airliners just have a door that closes regularly, like it shutting an entrance, rather than sealing a hole.

If you are referring to the scene where they are starting the engines prior to coming out of the mud, yes that is a real plane. You can also see the airstart truck used to "pressurize" the engines.

I'd have the agree, that is a classic movie. I have this site bookmarked. Its got a few audio clips from the movie:

http://classicfilm.about.com/library/blsoundairplane.htm

Gabe

1) Exterior shots of people climbing up the ladder into the stuck 707- Fake Plane

I just reviewed the DVD and found the following.

The entry door is all wrong. If you compare when Joe Patroni climbs into the 707 (1:58:22 into the film), you will notice that the door has Douglas style hinges and the window in the door is too far away from the handle. Compare with this photo
View Large View Medium

Photo © David Hartman


Also, notice that the galley doors in the interior shots are full size....Most 707's had small galley doors, including N324F.
View Large View Medium

Photo © Pedro Aragão





[Edited 2004-02-23 04:25:11]

Watch Skyjacked for a shot of a real B707C turning onto the active runway extremely fast. So fast that it leaves visible tire marks. It's near the beginning of the film.

How about when the captain shuts down that annoying, know it all kid.

While slowly turning the a/c back to the airport so as to not alert the bomber on board, the kid asks the captain if they are due east why certain star constellations are now on the wrong side of the plane.

In classic aviation BS, the captain says... "Due to a Cecil wind, Dystor has vectored us into a 360-tossing of slower traffic. Now we'll maintain this Borden hold, until we get the Forta Magnus clearance from Meldings."

The kid sits stunned and the captain walks off. Classic!