The FX of Air Force One hitting the water were very fake looking.

Yup.

Indeed.

I finally caught up with this one last night on cable, 8 1/2 years after it was released. Too much like Die Hard.

Yep, call it "Die Hard On a Plane".

They did Die Hard at an airport. It was called Die Hard 2.

And they did Die Hard on a starship. It was called Starship Mine(TNG) .

Ah no Scott, even as terrorist-hunter pretending to be a barber, Picard is ten times cooler then Bruce Willis on any day!

Yep, call it "Die Hard On a Plane".

There actually was a decent Die Hard knockoff set on a plane - 1992's Passenger 57, with Wesley Snipes, Bruce Payne as the villain, and (before he did porn) Tom Sizemore.

The last half-hour of Air Force One was actually pretty good. It was the journey through the first 90 minutes that was not-so-hot.

And Die Hard2 involved planes, was set at an airport, and had a subplot taking place on one of the planes. The climactic scene, in fact, took place on the wing of a plane.

If the terrorists had their own pilot, why did they try to force Air Force One's pilots to abort their landing? Just kill them and get them out of the way so your own pilot can take their place.

When the terrorist leader gets thrown out of the plane, the way it was done he should have had his head ripped off and not just his neck merely broken.

The real life President Bill Clinton said that Air Force One has no escape pod or parachutes onboard, at least not at the time he was using it.

Speaking of escape pod, assuming one did exist, I don't think they would just put the President alone on it and jettison it. I'm pretty sure at least one Secret Service agent would accompany him to provide protection. The Secret Service NEVER leaves the President unprotected.

A cell phone would not work in an airplane, at least not at the time the movie was made. Also, Air Force One probably would not allow any communications that did not go through its own communication center.

During the initial firefight onboard the plane, there are a lot of bullets flying everywhere, none of which pierced its skin or broke a window. How convenient!

There are a lot of highly trained secret service and military men on the plane. Granted there are also many civilians that they have to keep as safe as possible, yet they apparently make no effort at all to devise a plan to retake the plane.

Gibbs efficiently kills the three men guarding the President's suite and the onboard weapons prior to the initial terrorist attack. Why didn't he use the same technique to quickly dispose of the airman, Caldwell and the President at the end? He didn't seem too concerned about being found out anyway.

Better yet, why try to kill the President at that point? Just leave the plane with everyone else and resume your role as a mole in the Secret Service, waiting for a later opportunity to strike or assist in another terrorist attack.

NANJAO The Defense secretary attempts to have the President declared incapacited or unable to fullfill his duties so the Vice President can take over. To do this, he needs a certain number of House Representatives (I think) sign a specific document, which the Vice President also has to sign. However, when presented with the document, which was made without her knowledge or consent, her loyalty to the President prevents her to do so. Later, after the crisis is over, she takes the document and destroys it. I would have loved to see her keep it though, to use it later as political leverage against the bastards who had dared sign it and thus approved the attempted overthrow of the President.