Accompanying music includes excerpts from the film soundtracks of The Shawshank Redemption, The Sum of All Fears, Requiem for a Dream, Heat, and 28 Days Later.

A diversion is opened, but a lack of coordination between the Highways Agency and Surrey Police means that the route is quickly gridlocked due to roadworks.

Birmingham and Manchester are rendered unreachable by road, causing a planned friendly match between Turkey and England at Old Trafford to be cancelled due to low attendance.

Numerous motorists try to flee the area, but are aggressively pursued, apprehended, and forced to turn back by officers of the Thames Valley Police.

In an attempt to gain control of the crisis, the government initiates 'Operation Gridlock', a contingency plan instructing those trapped to leave the motorways on foot and make their way to field hospitals for triage.

She begins making calls to find out her husband's whereabouts, and is briefly calmed when she learns that Jerry was not scheduled to captain the flight involved in the disaster.

[1] Katie Derham, Charlotte Green, Philip Hayton, John Humphrys, Gary Lineker, Anna Rajan, Jon Snow and Kirsty Young appeared as themselves.

Archive footage of Prime Minister Tony Blair was used, combining parts of his statements in the House of Commons about Air France Flight 4590 and the Great Heck rail crash.

[3]Radio Times called the film: "Scarily realistic ... so plausibly done that it should really have a warning flash in the corner of the screen saying 'fiction' in big red letters. ...

The programme takes insufficient account of the traffic flow management procedures and ground movement radar systems, and inaccurately portrays the context in which airspace sectors are combined.

NATA keeps these procedures under constant review and, as a consequence, the UK has maintained its exemplary air safety record despite rising levels of traffic.