Goofs for
Airplane! (1980) More at IMDbPro »

• Revealing mistakes: At the Mayo Clinic, you can see the wire attached to the heart when it starts bouncing around the desk.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the disco bar scene, the bum that gets stabbed in the back can be visibly seen wearing protective padding that sticks out of his clothes.
  
  
• Continuity: Elaine says they should begin the plans they made before the war. Elaine and Ted met during the war.
  
  

• Continuity: The external shots of the aircraft used are of a Boeing 707. The interior flight deck is of a Douglas DC-9.
  
  
• Continuity: During the opening montage when certain principal characters are introduced, Joey (the little boy) can be seen in the far background carrying a brown bag in the shot with the Hari Krishnas. A few seconds later we see him getting out of a car with his parents and luggage.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Captain Rex Kramer is going into the airport and throwing the different annoying solicitors around, you can see the tan and blue mat that the stuntmen fall on by Kramer's leg.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Ted catches Elaine in the LA Airport terminal for the first time to talk to her, you can see a crew member pulling a cable.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the inflatable autopilot is losing air and floating around the cockpit, a wire pulling it is clearly visible.
  
  
• Continuity: After Elaine lets go of Ted in the dance floor, he somersaults into the audience, quickly gets up and runs back to the dance floor. But while "Ted" (the stuntman) is somersaulting, the real Ted (Robert Hays) is visible in the background.
  
  
• Continuity: Striker radios the control tower to say the landing gear is down and they're ready to land. Several moments later, an external shot of the aircraft shows the landing gear raised.
  
  
• Continuity: In the opening sequence, the nose breaking through the glass has different markings and window frames from the plane we see mistakenly directed into the airport lounge.
  
  
• Continuity: During the final scenes, the runway is dry before landing. As the passengers deplane, the runway is wet and stays wet during the kissing scene. When Otto takes off again, the runway is dry.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: At the airport, when Oveur gets a call about the "transplantation-girl" (with the white/red/black phones), after he picks up the wrong phone, you can clearly hear Nancy Hansen (the script supervisor) laughing in the background.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Despite what Ted Striker hears in his interior monologue, Pedro Borbon and Manny Mota were never on the same roster, so Mota could not have pinch hit for Borbon.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Elaine picks up Ted and starts swinging him around in the disco bar scene, the wires that hold him up are visible for a brief second.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Striker comes back into the cockpit after talking to the doc, he moves "Otto" out of the way, revealing a hand behind the pilot's seat.
  
  
• Continuity: One exterior shot as the plane is landing shows the silhouette of a Boeing 727, noted by the lack of engines on the wings and the two wheels (instead of the four that a 707, which other external shots show the plane as being, would have) on one "main" landing gear assembly. The shot at the very end (where the words "THE END" come up) also shows a 727.
  
  
• Continuity: Captain Oveur announces that arrival in Chicago will be at 10:45 p.m. Central time, which would put their departure from Los Angeles at around 5 p.m. Pacific, yet it is already dark as night outside when the plane takes off.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the stewardess borrows the nun's guitar and plays for the sick child, her hand movements do not match the chord progressions in the song, nor does she seem to be making the correct fingering for the chords in the song.
  
  
• Continuity: When we see the passengers swaying and clapping to Randy's song, Ted Striker is missing.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: On the airplane in several shots, duct tape can be seen holding the overhead luggage compartments together.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: A hand throwing the jacket back at Striker is clearly visible to the left.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: At the end of the film, when Otto salutes, you can see a wire controlling his saluting arm.
  
  
• Continuity: Ted Striker throws a full glass of drink over his shirt and soaks it. The scene cuts away to the cockpit and then back to Striker (with the Sikh dousing himself in gasoline) and his shirt is dry again.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: When the First Jive Dude is ordering his meal, the subtitles are incomplete. In addition to steak, he orders a cup of coffee.
  
  
• Continuity: Although Kramer is supposed to be entering the Chicago airport, you can clearly see he is walking through the same airport (Los Angeles) from the beginning of the movie
  
  
• Continuity: During the 747-through-the-window gag, the plane is originally shown to be in period TWA colors, before it is misdirected. However, when it plows through the window, it has the fictional Trans American colors. Most obviously the red stripes now wrap all the way around the nose and the black anti-glare patch is missing from beneath the cockpit windshield.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the scene where Dr. Rumak is treating the sick female passenger, he is removing eggs from her mouth. In one shot where he removes and egg, cracks it and a little bird flies away, the woman is startled and in her half-open mouth you can clearly see that an egg is already there, making it obvious that she was releasing the same egg time and again; equally obviously, then, the doctor was picking up additional eggs from underneath the tray table.
  
  
• Continuity: When Elaine and Striker are rolling around in the sand, a beached fish appears and disappears in the sand depending on the camera angle.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Ted Striker first sits in the cockpit, he checks the status of multiple instruments including the airspeed indicator and says his speed is 520 Knots when the indicator is in miles per hour. If they were traveling at 520 knots, they would be in fact moving at approximately 598 miles an hour.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Rex Kramer enters the airport he is approached by various solicitors (that Kramer proceeds to rough up). Dialouge is heard of the solicitors speaking to Kramer but it's clear that none of them are talking.
  
  
• Factual errors: FAA Regulations state that the Pilot & the Co-Pilot cannot eat the same meal but Elaine comes in the cockpit offering the same meal to both.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: If you look closely at the "Girl Scouts" fighting, you can see one wearing a safety pad on her back.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the plane takes off, we hear a propeller on a jet. The filmmakers wanted the film to take place on a prop plane, while the studio insisted that it take place on a jet. The compromise? They used a jet with a propeller sound effect.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The model airplane that the pilots give to the young boy who tours the cockpit is not the same kind of plane that they are flying on. The model is a 727, the plane being used is a 707. The pilot never said that it was a model of the plane that they were flying.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Obvious matte painting of a 747 in the background during the scene when the maintenance guy is cleaning the windshield.
  
  
• Errors in geography: At one point, the pilot mentions that they are flying over the Hoover Dam, and that their route will take them south of the Grand Canyon. If they are flying from LAX to Chicago (which runs in a WNW direction), it would be impossible to fly both over Hoover Dam and South of the Grand Canyon at the same time, since Hoover Dam is located directly west of the Grand Canyon.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When he first begins to tell his story to the old lady, Striker states that he was in the Air Force. In the flashback sequence that immediately follows, he is wearing a U.S. Navy uniform.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the nun slaps the hysterical wife in the cabin, you can hear the slap, but the nun barely touches the woman's face.
  
  
• Continuity: When Elaine reports the plane's speed she correctly reports it in miles per hour, when Ted does the same, he reads it as knots.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Ted catches Elaine after throwing her up in the air during the dance scene, it's obvious that Elaine was standing just out of camera range and leaps back into his arms.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Randi pulls the unconscious Roger Murdock through the cabin, you can see the flat dolly he is lying on.
  
  
• Factual errors: Manny Mota never actually pinch hit for Pedro Borbon; both were active in the 1970's, but never played on the same team together.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: During all the exteriors of the airplane in the sky, the sound effect of a large propeller plane instead of a jet engine is heard.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the girl scout fight scene, one girl clearly bumps the camera as she is pushed back toward it
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Johnny is handed the newspaper and he announces "There's a sale at Penney's!", the front part of the paper was visible which means he would have had to be reading the paper upside down. Also, he was reading from the front page of the newspaper and they never put sales ads on the front page. (This error might have been done on purpose.)
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Murdock collapses, and Captain Oveur regains control, the dial showing elevation is spinning out of control, but the flight level indicator shows the plane is level.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: During the fight between the two Girl Scouts at the Magumbo Bar, one girl scout is thrown across the bar and into the jukebox. When her head hits the jukebox window, the sound of shattering glass is heard, but it's clear that there is no glass in the window frame.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The Girl Scout who lands hard on the dance floor while Ted and Elaine are slow dancing is obviously a dummy.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Cracks can be seen in the control tower window before McCroskey jumps through it.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When the captain notifies Chicago of the emergency, he said nothing about food poisoning, however, the air traffic controller orders all meal services canceled.
  
  
• Continuity: When he first begins to tell his story to the old lady there is a seatcover between the back of the two seats they are sitting on and the upholstery on both seats is the same. at the end of the story, the seat upholstery is different on both seats and the center seatcover is missing. The upholstery is the same and the center seatback cover is back however a bit later in the film when Ted is sitting next to Elaine.
  
  
• Continuity: Just before Ted gives up on trying to land the plane, he says he should have been watching the oil pressure. Immediately after, Rex Kramer chastises him for not watching the oil temperature.
  
  
• Continuity: As Ted is landing the plane, he is told the runway should be visible 300 feet below him. If this was the case, he would have been on it in a few seconds yet he cannot yet see the runway and still flies for a couple of minutes before landing.
  
  

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