Martin actually uses the adjective "precious" to describe jet fuel. Remember this was before OPEC, when the stuff was pretty cheap!Yet it's all authentic, in its own horrible way. Not authentic to real people and to a real story, God forbid, but authentic to an idealized way of life that people imagined I suppose as late as 1970, when this clunker was made.Why watch it now? Watch for the airport exteriors shot at a real airport---Minneapolis/St. Paul International--which does not look like this any more. Gone are the open-air parking lot, the gleaming white concourses, the tin and cheesecloth ticket counters. Gone with them are the silly notions that stewardesses are sex kittens in jolly nice uniforms, that real men smoke tobacco products on any and all occasions, and that nothing could be more glamorous than a Boeing 707 taking off for Rome. Especially gone is the era when a passenger could stroll aboard an airplane toting even a sewing scissors, nevermind what D.O. Guerrero was packing in that briefcase.Gone is the innocence of the uninspected life, an innocence this movie holds in spades.

glasses while in coach. :- The set design of the 707 is EXACTLY perfect. I flew with my parents many times and remember those interiors well. I wish the airlines would take a look at this movie while they are doing personnel reviews. HEHE..Sure, the writing is a little "campy" but overall it is an excellent movie with actual historic value.

is this one is perfectly paced and never lets up from beginning to end. This was the first and best of the 70's big budget disaster movies; it was also followed by several mediocre Airport "sequels" that bear little resemblance to this simple treasure. Derivative or not, this film has been so copied hilariously by Airplane! among others that I suspect younger viewers don't give it the credit it deserves.

for Dean Martin, who's not as convincing as a pilot as he would be with a drink, a cigarette and a Golddigger on each arm. I have nothing against the guy, but he's just not that good an actor. Its shallow how Helen Hayes gets all the same music over her scenes, telling you she's a dotty old lady, as if you couldn't tell by looking at her and her little hat. She beat poor Maureen Stapleton for an Oscar that year, and I guess you can see why. Poor Mo, all she does is suffer as a desperate mans wife and there is no catharsis for her character at all. Burt Lancaster was too busy looking at the zeroes on his paycheck to notice that there was not much of a part for him, but he was smart enough to take the money and do something worthwhile with it, like make something meaningful..This movie single-handedly started the craze of 1970's disaster movies, so we do owe it some respect. And I saw practically all the them, too.

are gorgeous. George Kennedy was never better. Dean Martin is sober and believable as a pilot. And Helen Hayes is perhaps the most deserved Supporting Actress in movie history. Even the 'bad guy' has his motivation fully detailed, and you even feel sympathy for him and for his wife. If you're looking to introduce your younger viewers to the disaster genre before bludgeoning them with San Andreas, start with this one. You'll have a great time. It's a great movie.

Slapstick switches immediately to a tense and realistic story. When the Air Traffic Controllers who had to have been non-actors - they are so dry and entirely without any emotion - very realistic start talking the plane down, the movie stops pandering to the Audience and gives them a dry, technical, and ultimately suspenseful last 30 minutes. When the plane has entered the clouds and it's impossible to see anything and all you can hear are the reports from Approach Control ' 5 miles from runway' '4 miles from runway' it is to this day more exciting to me than 200 million dollars of CGI Asteroid in Armageddon.

who neglects his wife Dana Wynter while lusting after his passenger relations agent Jean Seberg . Dean Martin almost gives an actual performance as Vernon Demarest, the smooth-talking pilot who also neglects his wife Barbara Hale while having an affair with a stewardess lovely Jacqueline Bisset whom he has impregnated. George Kennedy began his long association with the character of Joe Patroni here he would play the role in three subsequent sequels . Van Heflin is extremely effective as D.O. Guerrero, the sad and twisted man who plans to blow up an airliner. Helen Hayes won an Oscar playing Ada Quonsett, a little old lady who stows away on the plane, but that Oscar should have gone to Maureen Stapleton, who is just devastating as Guerrero's wife, who is totally dismayed about her husband's plan and is tragically heartbreaking during one brief scene near the end of the film. For those who like their adventure films spiced with some somewhat corny, soap suds, put your brain in check and have your fill with AIRPORT.

from a devastating snow-storm to a Boeing 707 bomber...Helen Hayes stands out as the eccentric little old lady passenger, winner of a well-deserved Oscar as Supporting Actress, after a 12-year absence from the screen...Another nominee is Maureen Stapleton in an outstanding performance as the afflictive, desperate wife of an expert in demolition a disturb Heflin projecting vitality and fatigue as vulnerability and strength to her role...Barbara Hale does not have much showcasing compared to the scene-stealing performances of Hayes or Stapleton but she handles well the sequence of relief, then despair and finally resignation as she witnesses her husband escorting Bisset in the climax of the film... George Kennedy is excellent as the 'biting cigar' maintenance Chief Patroni, the expert in the aviation world... The scene of his maneuvering of the Boeing, trapped in the snow, to free the runway, is incredible... In this scene we can appreciate the prototype of the Boeing 707 that 'could do everything, but read.'The highlights of the film: the scene of the cabin class, after the violent explosion; the effects of the compression at 30,000 feet; the Radar Room and Air Traffic Control; and the unperturbed voice of one of the Air Controller, his steadiness, serenity, skill and knowledge...Nominated for 10 Academy Awards, "Airport" is undeniably entertaining!

gets going, it is a very exciting and entertaining drama.When you watch Airport, it is very clearly a 70's film. It has dated fairly badly, but it is still entertaining if you can sit through it long enough for it to really get started. The runway scenes, those involving the airplane that was stuck in the snow, were particularly well made, and the acting was good, but the movie was a little too talky. It seemed that it told too much of the story through dialogue, which is one of the things that made the first half so boring. Now, I'm not against extensive dialogue, but it has to be right for the movie, and Airport was almost too much of a thriller to be moving that slow for that long. However, despite all of this, don't be put off by the movie's extensive running time or the superficial clunkiness that the movie seems to have, or even the fact that one of the main characters Burt Lancaster is one of the ugliest men ever to be shown on the silver screen. Once the film gets around to the bomb on the plane, you start to see how all of these seemingly obscure stories that you have been watching tie together. Airport is a very well thought out and scripted movie, and it is ultimately very satisfying.