Can't believe there's not a board for this yet...

Nits. The plane is a 747. The cockpit has 3 seats (747). I believe it's referred to as a 747. The model for the plane in flight is not a 747.

The woman who does the Folger's bit (Jim never has a second cup/Jim never vomits), has fish for dinner, but she doesn't get sick.

Man, they really butchered this film for broadcast.

The model is of a 707 or 720, some older jet planes needed a cockpit crew of at least 3, if not 4.

My Dad really like the way in which it takes ages for the plane to get to the runway, every shot seems to move it backwards.

The plane's a jet airliner, with propeller-engine sound fx.

Um... isn't finding nits for this film a little redundant? I mean, the nits were pretty much made on purpose, right?

You mean it wasn't a documentary? I always assumed they were flying in low in a battle of the civil war. My father's drinking problem wasn't quite like that but I assumed it varried on an individual basis. I spent years, YEARS, trying to get on a crippled plane next to a female passenger who explained to me that she did not want to die a virgin. You mean real Autopilots aren't inflatable?

Well, not necessarily all of them, Craig. A jet airliner with propeller sound fx,the wrong model plane--I don't think those were intentional.

Actually, in the DVD commentary, the ZAZ fellas do admit they used the wrong engine sounds, but they said they wanted to capture the feel of the old "Terror in the Sky" type movies they were lampooning. It was intentional.

A schoolfriend of mine reckoned that his sister watched this & assumed afterwards that Autopilots were inflatable dummys. I'm sure that's a tall story.

When Ted and Elaine are in the Peace Corps and Ted talks about re-upping, Elaine talks about the plans they made before the war. Excuse me, but they didn't make any plans before the war... they met DURING the war!

What war is this supposed to be? From the time frame, one would assume Vietnam, but the planes shown are WWII fighters. Of course this may be a non-nit, as it's intended to be humorous.

"Headquarters? What is it?"
"It's a big building where generals meet, but that's not important."

According to IMDB, in this movie, Johhny is "Johnny Hinshaw". In Airplane II, Johnny is "Johnny Jacobs".

When I was a kid, I caught the last part of the film (about when Leslie Nielsen first comes in) on TV. Now, I don't know if it was because I was a rather dense child or if the film really is that subtle near the end, but I swear I thought it was a drama!

JD: Actually, in the DVD commentary, the ZAZ fellas do admit they used the wrong engine sounds, but they said they wanted to capture the feel of the old "Terror in the Sky" type movies they were lampooning. It was intentional.

Exactly. They were trying to parody a movie entitled "Zero Hour", and they wanted it to be set in the fifties. However, they were basically told by the studio head when he first read the script that it had to be on a jet so that more people would identify with it. They complied but tossed in the prop sound effects for fun anyways.

The woman who does the Folger's spoof (Lee Bryant) also played T.J. Hooker's wife, in Bill Shatner's series of the same name.
The "singing nun" sequence was a spoof of a similar scene in Airport 1975. After seeing Airplane, I can't take Airport 1975 seriously anymore.

Jim never vomits at home!

Surely, probably the best parody ever made!

Just saw both Airplane and Zero Hour on AMC. It is impossible to watch Zero Hour immediately after Airplane without laughing just as much. Airplane is actually a remake of the first movie, with tons of jokes added. ZH has many of the same characters, situations, and dialogue. I don't think I would've enjoyed it as much seeing it before Airplane.

And don't call me Shirley.

The speedometer drops down to 500, then they ask Elaine how fast and she says "520". Later they show the speedometer at 500 and Ted says, "520".

Not a nit, but David Letterman actually tried out for the part of Ted.

NANJAO - the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker team threw in a reference to themselves... "WZAZ... where disco lives forever!"

My Favorite Bits

"Listen, Betty, don't start up with your white zone **** again!"

The way Peter Graves says "I've got it!" after the PA announces that he has a phone call again

"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man, healthy, wealthy, and wise."

"We have clearance, Clarence." "Roger, Roger. What's our vector, Victor?"

Striker's drinking problem

The Stayin' Alive dance sequence, especially when Striker pulls off his impossible moves

"Tell your old man to drag Walton and Denier up and down the court for 48 minutes."

"Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?"

The strange plight of Lieutenant Hurwitz

Rex Kramer hitting the cyclist in the rear-screen projection sequence

Rex Kramer entering the airport

"You ought to route him into Lake Michigan, at least we'll avoid killing innocent people."

"I can make a hat, or a brooch, or a pterodactyl." (one of the few Johnny lines I find funny)

"Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon--Manny Mota."

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue."

"Get that finger out of your ear. You don't know where that finger's been!"

"Maybe we ought to turn on the search lights now." "No, that's just what they'll be expecting us to do."

The assuming of crash positions

"900 feet, up to 1300 feet...what an ***-hole!"

"Do you know what it's like falling in the mud and getting kicked in the head with an iron boot?"

My favorite part is when Dr. Rumack goes into the cockpit, and Elaine is having to blow-up the automatic pilot.

One sight gag that I never really caught until a few years ago was when Captain Kramer first appears. His wife is facing him, while a mirror shows Kramer adjusting his coat and cap.
There is a short cut-away to the man wrestling the dog.
When the shot goes back to Kramer, his wife is still facing him and he is still in the mirror. Then, he walks OUT OF the mirror.

"Joey, do you like to hang around the gymnasium? Do you like movies about gladiators?"

Mike C,

That should be Walton and Lanier, as in Bob Lanier, Hall of Fame center with the Detroit Pistons in the 70s.

My bad. Thanks for the correction; I was going by Closed Captioning.

"This woman has to be gotten to a hospital."
"A hospital? What is it?
"It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now."

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines"

"My orders came through. My squadron ships out tomorrow. We're bombing the storage depots at Daiquiri at 1800 hours. We're coming in from the north, below their radar."
"When will you be back?"
"I can't tell you that. It's classified."

"Airplane" and "Zero Hour": A Comparison

"Zero Hour" has its hero Ted Stryker (Dana Andrews) who is in fact, MARRIED, to a woman named Helen with a son named Joey. Ted served in the R.A.F. during the War and did indeed lead a mission that resulted in six people dying. He has since gone through jobs like candy. At the beginning of the film, he finds a note (as Ted does in "Airplane!") that says Helen is leaving him and races to the airport to buy a ticket.

The captain is played by former football star, Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch (which the Kareem cameo is an inversion of).

The kid that visits the cockpit in Zero Hour is the Strykers' son, Joey. Hirsch's character (which combines the Kareem and Peter Graves characters) does indeed ask Joey if he has ever been in a cockpit before (just that, though). The captain is very friendly to Joey.

The fish is the offending food in this movie.

Mrs. Stryker does say the line that she can't live with a man she doesn't respect, but it's later in the film than when "Airplane" puts it. Stryker does not say "What a pisser."

The plane is landing in Vancouver, not Chicago.

There is a doctor on board (named Baird, not Rumack). The scene where the co-pilot passes out causing the plane to go into a freefall is basically identical. The captain manages to turn on the autopilot, which is not named Otto.

Vancouver's head, Burdick, recruits a guy named Treleaven, who did indeed work with Stryker during the war and doesn't like him (it is Treleaven, not Burdick, who picked the wrong week to quit smoking, though).

There is a panicky passenger that demands to be left off the plane. One character that didn't make it into Airplane, Tony (the boyfriend of the other stewardess), helps her. Tony seems to me comedy gold; he even uses a sock puppet in one scene, but was not in the ZAZ film.

The basic set-up of the last third is identical, with the bits about Stryker insisting that they land now, Ellen saying she's proud of Ted, and Treleaven offering to buy Stryker a drink intact.

AMC last night showed their DVD-TV version of this movie, which contains trivia at the bottom of the screen in the black bar that appears when a movie is letterboxed. There were some interesting facts (Harriet Nelson turned down the part that went to Barbara Billingsley).

And also, they thoughtfully showed us all those great commercials during the movie... And at the end of the movie, the credits helpfully shrank to about one fourth of the screen so you didn't have to read them. That way, you could watch another commercial! Cool!

And you didn't have to listen to Howard Jarvis delivering the last line of the film either.

Kudos to AMC!

AMC is my favorite movie channel!

That first commercial break blew me away. How long have they been doing that? I thought it was commercial free.

But then, when I first got cable I was surprised that there were commercials at all. After all, I was paying for it, why were there ads? (At that time I had not yet seen an infomercial.)

I missed the mirror gag -- I'll have to look for it next time.

For those who missed it (and I was lucky enough to catch it at the very end of the previous non-"DVD" showing), the stinger after the credits shows Howard Jarvis sitting in the taxi and saying, "OK, I'll give him 20 more minutes and that's it." I recall that there were several gags in the credits themselves.

Can you imagine this movie getting made today? Highly unlikely.

From IMDB's "Crazy Credits" page for Airplane...

Gripology ... Pete Papanickolas

Generally in charge of a lot of things ... Mike Finnell

Author of A Tale of Two Cities ... Charles Dickens

This motion picture is protected under the laws of the United States and
other countries. Unauthorized duplication, distribution, or exhibition
may result in civil liability or criminal prosecution. So there.

Foreez ... A Jolly Good Fellow

Worst Boy ... Adolf Hitler

In case of tornado ... Southwest corner of basement

"Otto" (the inflatable autopilot) ... himself

Horse............Windy

Thirteenth President of the United States ...... Millard Fillmore

The narration track of the DVD has lots of behind the scenes info.

The "Don't Call Me Shirley" edition of the DVD has been seen in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart. I should know; I recently got a copy that way. So, if you have a Wal-Mart near you, there should be nothing stopping you from owning this film. Well worth it, just for the bits noted above.
Stay Away from the sequel. The same bits done over, but not as well. Groan inducing to the extremus.

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking."

Here's Daily News critic Kathleen Carroll's not-so-hot 1980 review. She gave the flick only two stars out of four. I wonder if Ms. Carroll acquired a sense of humor at some point.

"A hospital. What is it"?
"It's a big building with patients, but that's not important now".

AIRPLANE 2

When the shuttle lands on the lunar surface, the passengers disembark without any spacesuits.

"Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon, Manny Mota!"

Mota and Borbon never played on the same team.

Zero Hour was itself a remake, of a 1956 Canadian TV movie titled Flight Into Danger. James Doohan played Ted Striker. (See what you can learn from the notes on the TCM streaming app. ) More here.

The Bee Gees "Staying Alive" was speeded up a bit here; Barry Gibb's falsetto really hits those high notes.

On flying to and from Florida recently, to see my brother, I looked into the cockpit on both flights. I couldn't help but think about the scene where Stryker checks out the plane's instrument panel (there sure were a lot of gauges and controls, weren't there? )