Bannerman takes charge of the survivors and teams with Merle Barnaby (Billy Dee Williams), a black marine returning from combat duty in Vietnam, to try to find a way to survive on the island.

Among the surviving passengers and crew, they have the support of Gina Talbot (Anne Francis) and Beejay Caldwell (Jennifer Leak) but oil magnate Glenn Walkup (Ralph Meeker), nightclub entertainer Eddie Randolph (Bobby Van) and Jonesy (Andrew Prine) begin to cause trouble.

When that project failed to attract much interest, it was put on hold with a new two-hour pilot movie later hatched in 1968 that resulted in Lost Flight.

Location shooting at Honolulu Airport in Hawaii showed the movie stand-in being fueled and loaded while surrounded by JAL and United DC-8s and Pan American 707s.

The couple wanted to get married right away, and since the company was due to wrap production and return to Honolulu at the end of the day that Saturday, Producer Paul Donnelly decided to spring into action and make the wedding happen.

He ordered loads of flowers, secured a white lace mini wedding gown for the bride, and even found a bible for them in one of the survival kits supplied with the various life rafts used in the film.

Hanalei Plantation musicians performed the wedding march, and the ceremony was performed in Haena Dry Cave on the island of Kauai (which served as the primary shelter for the story's characters throughout the latter half of the film) with Lloyd Bridges serving as best man, actress Nina Seaton as maid of honor, and Paul Donnelly giving the bride away.

[7] His further critical review effused over a "lost" gem, "...it is a reasonably entertaining, well-paced, technically ambitious movie that receives great assistance from its performers—notably Lloyd Bridges (the pilot) for good, Ralph Meeker (the businessman) for evil, and Anne Francis (the mistress) for marriage and the family.