Airport is a 1970 American air disaster–drama film written and directed by George Seaton and starring Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin.
The supporting cast features Jean Seberg, Jacqueline Bisset, George Kennedy, Helen Hayes, Van Heflin, Maureen Stapleton, Barry Nelson, Lloyd Nolan, Dana Wynter and Barbara Hale.
During a severe January snowstorm at Chicago's fictional Lincoln International Airport, Trans Global Airlines (TGA) Flight 45's crew misjudge their turn from Runway 29 onto the taxiway.
Pilot Vernon Demerest is scheduled to evaluate Captain Anson Harris during TGA Flight 2 to Rome, aboard the airline's flagship international service - The Golden Argosy.
Despite being married to Bakersfeld's sister, Demerest is having an affair with Gwen Meighen, chief stewardess on the flight, who informs him before takeoff that she is pregnant with his child.
Bakersfeld also clashes with commissioner Ackerman, who wishes to close the alternate runway 22 (and thus the entire airport) due of noise complaints from nearby residents.
Guerrero, who has a history of mental illness, buys both a ticket aboard Flight 2 and a large life insurance policy, intending to commit suicide.
His erratic behavior at the airport, including mistaking a Customs officer for a gate agent, attracts officials' attention.
Guerrero moves to give Demerest the bomb, but then runs into the lavatory and sets it off, dying and blowing a three-foot hole in the rear fuselage.
However, Patroni goes ahead and manages to free the stuck aircraft without damage by defying the specified engine and structural limit requirements, allowing Runway 29 to be reopened just in time for the crippled Flight 2 to land.
It sported an El Al cheatline over its bare metal finish, with the fictional Trans Global Airlines (TGA) titles and tail.
[1] The film grossed $235,000 in its opening week at Radio City Music Hall, placing seventh at the US box office.
[21] Variety wrote: "Based on the novel by Arthur Hailey, over-produced by Ross Hunter with a cast of stars as long as a jet runway, and adapted and directed by George Seaton in a glossy, slick style, Airport is a handsome, often dramatically involving $10 million epitaph to a bygone brand of filmmaking" but added that the film "does not create suspense because the audience knows how it's going to end.
"[22]Boxoffice praised the film's strong production values, excellent cast, and potential to be very popular but foresaw that other critics' opinions would not be universally favourable.
[23] Film critic Pauline Kael gave Airport one of its worst contemporary reviews, scornfully dismissing it as "bland entertainment of the old school.
"[25] Gene Siskel gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and reported that while the theater audience cheered at the climax, "it's a long and torturous road to the applause.
"[27] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called the film "breath-taking in its celebration of anything which used to work when Hollywood was younger and we were all more innocent.
"[29] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote, "Corny is really the only word for this unbelievably old-fashioned look at the modern phenomenon of an international airport: the one surprise is that the sweet old white-haired stowaway doesn't spring to the controls and bring the distressed aircraft down single-handed as Doris Day did once upon a time in analogous circumstances.
The job was handled by Stanley Wilson, although the covers of the Decca "original soundtrack album" and the 1993 Varèse Sarabande CD issue credit Newman.