[3] The novel/film is considered the original "airline disaster" story, sparking a new genre of film with the likes of the Airport movie series and the spoof comedy Airplane!

Former captain Dan Roman, the flight's veteran first officer known for his habit of whistling, is haunted by a takeoff crash in South America that killed his wife and son and left him with a permanent limp.

Stewardess Spalding attends her passengers, each with varying personal problems, and befriends the terminally ill Frank Briscoe after being charmed by his pocket watch.

The men struggle and Agnew pulls out a gun, intending to shoot Childs, but before he can do so, the plane swerves violently when it loses a propeller and the engine catches fire.

A favorable change in the winds and the arrival of a Coast Guard rescue B-17 to escort them raises the crew's hopes that they have just enough fuel to reach San Francisco.

Dan's experience tells him that their luck would be better trying to make land than ditching in the rough seas at night, and he recognizes that fear rather than judgment is governing Sullivan's decisions.

As the airliner approaches rain-swept San Francisco in the middle of the night and at a perilously low altitude, the airport prepares for an emergency instrument landing.

On a Matson Airlines DC-4 flight from Honolulu to Burbank, the stewardess complained of a sporadic vibration that was rattling the dishes and silverware in the rear of the plane.

After landing, the vibration was eventually traced to a missing elevator hinge bolt on the tail flight controls, a problem that had caused the crash of similar DC-4's.