Crystal Bernard plays Helen, their friend since childhood and later Joe's love interest and wife, who runs the airport's lunch counter but dreams of becoming a concert cellist.

Brothers Joe and Brian Hackett own Sandpiper Air, a small single-plane airline on Nantucket Island.

They are joined by an Italian immigrant, Antonio Scarpacci, who operates a taxi service and Fay Cochran, a sweet but scatterbrained widow who runs the Sandpiper ticket counter.

Later in the series, Helen's snobbish older sister Casey moves to the island and becomes the unwitting object of Antonio's affections.

With a few exceptions, the cast was mostly consistent for the show's run: Played by Tim Daly, Joseph Montgomery Hackett is a highly responsible, compulsively neat pilot who co-owns the one-plane airline Sandpiper Air on Nantucket Island with his brother Brian.

He dreamed of becoming a pilot as a child, and became the de facto patriarch of the Hackett family after their mother disappeared, which caused their father to go insane and become institutionalized.

Played by Steven Weber, Brian Michael Hackett is the younger and more carefree of the brothers and co-owns Sandpiper Air with Joe.

He had a "free ride" to Princeton and dropped out, was accepted into the Astronaut training program at NASA and was expelled because he took dates into the simulator, and lost other lucrative opportunities due to his chronic irresponsibility.

Brian is a shameless womanizer for most of the series, but has two significant relationships: the first with helicopter pilot Alex Lambert, and then with Casey Chappel Davenport, Helen's older sister.

Though Helen dreams of playing the cello in a large symphony orchestra, she runs the lunch counter in the airport terminal and never manages to get a music career off the ground until the final episode.

Examples include: Helen having to join a string quartet of neurotic individuals as it is the only group at the time who accepts her; Helen being accepted by a state-run symphony, only to learn the state legislature eliminated the funding; the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) appreciating a cassette of her cello playing, but losing the label and having no way to contact her; and when she finally gets a chance to play for the BSO, the plane crashes en route.

Played by David Schramm, Roy Peterman Biggins is the owner of Aeromass, the only other airline on Nantucket and, with seven planes, a larger business than Sandpiper.

Despite this, Roy feels threatened by Joe's presence as a competitor and makes numerous attempts either to buy Sandpiper or put it out of business.

Despite his sleazy and conniving nature, Roy does have a more generous side: when Helen finds out that she was not properly divorced from her sham marriage to Antonio, Roy helps her concoct an elaborate plan to send Joe away for a weekend of fly fishing in Maine while she, Brian and Antonio fly to Tampico, Mexico to get a "quickie" divorce from a Senor Pepe.

After about a year, however, his eccentricities became unbearable to the Hacketts, and they kick him out to find his own place, which coincides with the conclusion of the insurance investigation, the payout allowing him to buy himself a house on land.

Antonio is mild-mannered, deferential, and hopelessly romantic; he falls head-over-heels for Helen's older sister Casey when she returns to Nantucket, although his feelings are not reciprocated.

He annoys Joe, Brian, Lowell and Antonio when he demands to be flown to Las Cruces, New Mexico, far beyond the scope of Sandpiper's routes.

However, the brothers reluctantly agree as Carlton won a charity contest sponsored by Sandpiper and the rules did say the winner "will be flown anywhere".

Donald Hackett: played by Don Murray, Joe and Brian's deceased father took it hard when his wife, the boys' mother, walked out on the family.

He has a good sense of humor, and in the series premiere his will was required to be read to Brian and Joe together, forcing them to reunite after their six-year estrangement.

In that episode, Joe, in order to assuage his guilt over a plan to go to a strip club, volunteers at the senior citizens' home, where he is assigned to spend time with Lou.

After spending a moment complaining about how lousy nursing home life is, Lou manages to guilt trip Joe into taking him to the strip club.

Lou was originally intended as a one-shot appearance, but proved so popular that he was brought back in the show's final season, along with his brother Harry, played by Abe Vigoda.

Her fantasies include a re-enacted high school prom in the basement of her old house, the couple's wedding and honeymoon in Helen's living room, and the birth of their first child in Joe's therapist's office.

Until 1976, the real-life island was the site of the United States Navy's Tom Nevers Naval Facility, later the home of the Nantucket Hunting Association.

In addition, Peri Gilpin—who had also appeared in Cheers and was later known for playing Roz in Frasier—was originally up for the role of Helen Chappel and also appeared in the Wings Season 3 episode "Four Dates That Will Live in Infamy" playing a different character,[12] while her character on Frasier, Roz Doyle, is named as a tribute to one of Wings's producers, who died from breast cancer in 1991.

In the Season 9 episode "Bla-Z-Boy" Niles (David Hyde Pierce) plays the Wings theme song (Schubert's Piano sonata No.

[14][15] Also, several of the same extras and actors in smaller supporting parts appear across all three shows, so it is not unusual to spot familiar faces in the airport in Wings, the bar in Cheers, and sometimes on Frasier as well.

It has also been available on several other services, including CBS All Access (now Paramount+), Hulu Plus, Netflix (DVD only), the now defunct Comedy Gold, and on a Wings channel on Pluto TV.

The title card is shown, then the cast members' names as the plane flies over various places and finally into Nantucket Memorial Airport.