Trailer
Plot summary
This precursor to later "epic" 70's disaster films illustrates 12 hours in the lives of the personnel and passengers at the "Lincoln Airport." Endless problems, professional and personal, are thrown at the various personnel responsible for the safe and proper administration of air traffic, airline management and aviation at a major US airport. Take one severe snowstorm, add multiple schedules gone awry, one elderly Trans Global Airlines stowaway, shortages, an aging, meretricious pilot, unreasonable, peevish spouses, manpower issues, fuel problems, frozen runways and equipment malfunctions and you get just a sample of the obstacles faced by weary, disgruntled personnel and passengers at the Lincoln Airport. Toss in one long-suffering pilot's wife, several stubborn men, office politics and romance and one passenger with a bomb and you have the film "Airport" from 1970.
Cast
- Jodean Lawrenceas Marie Patroni
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Airport (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Only one Boeing 707 was used, a 707-349C leased from Flying Tiger Line and dressed with the fictional Trans Global Airlines titles and tail; it later crashed on March 21, 1989 during approach into Sao Paulo as cargo flight Transbrasil Flight 801, killing all three crew members and 22 people on the ground.
- Director George Seaton caught pneumonia on Christmas Day 1968 during production, so Henry Hathaway stepped in to direct most of the exterior scenes for five weeks, but he chose to take no payment or screen credit for the work.
- Newman did conduct the music heard in the film, but died before its release, and received his 45th Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score posthumously for Airport, the most received by a composer at that time.
- The ABC broadcast became the joint highest-rated film on television, matching Love Story with a Nielsen rating of 42.3 but a slightly higher audience share of 63%; the record was beaten in 1976 by Gone with the Wind.
- The expensive set representing the full interior of the 707 was left standing at Universal Studios and joined with a 747 interior, the pair becoming known as "Stage 747"; the 707 set was used in The Andromeda Strain and on series like Ironside before being removed around 2002.
- Minnesota's legendary winters attracted Hollywood in 1969, when portions of Airport were shot in the terminal and on the field, but the weather remained stubbornly clear, forcing the director to use plastic "snow" to create the appropriate effect.
- Despite Airport being one of the most profitable films of his career, star Burt Lancaster openly dismissed it, calling it "a piece of junk."
- George Kennedy is the only actor who appeared in all four Airport films as mechanic Joe Patroni, whose job title rose across the series from chief mechanic to a vice president of operations, then a consultant, and finally an experienced pilot.
