The Concorde: Airport '79 (1979)

This film is the last (so far) of the Airport genre which stars George Kennedy again in his aviation-disaster struck role as Joe Patroni, who has to contend with nuclear missiles, the French Air Force and the threat of the plane splitting in two over the Alps! This is all because a lady on board, Maggie has some documents which put Harrison Industries in big trouble (showing that they make nuclear weapons) and their leader, played by Robert Wagner, wants the Concorde to crash with Maggie (Susan Blakely) in it!! Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: When this film was greeted with derisive laughter by American audiences, Universal decided to market it as a comedy, with the tagline: "Fasten your seatbelts, the thrills are terrific... and so are the laughs!" The film was renamed upon its release in the UK because it reached theaters there a year later.

The Airport curse continued with this movie. As you should recall, the 707 from Airport and the small plane from Airport 1975 both crashed (seperately) in 1989 with 20 people lost. The Concorde featured in this film first flew as F-WTSC on 31 Jan 1975, and was the 7th Concorde built. It was re-registered as F-BTSC (serial number 203) in May 1975, and it appears with this registration in the film. The Concorde was leased from Aerospatiale (France) for the movie, and was sold to Air France in October 1980. This Concorde was the same aircraft which crashed after a tire burst causing a fule tank to rupture and the leaking fuel to catch fire on July 25th 2000, while taking off from Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris. All 109 people aboard and 4 people on the ground died.

Okay, that was a bummer, now to the movie and hopefully some laughs. Again, be warned, here there be spoilers. Maggie, girlfriend of Robert Wagner, head of great big corporation that suplies weapons to the military, finds out that the compnay is guilty of some shennanigans including selling weapons to the enemy. She finds this out after she is almost killed by a strange man. Did I mention she is a reporter? Does she go straight to her office and film a story about it? Nope, she gets on an airplane to Moscow. The plane is then "accidently" fired upon be an experimental weapon from her boyfriend's company. Luckily, the Concorde is certified as an acrobatic aircraft and it is able to evade the missle. Does she now go to the cockpit and tell them her boyfriend maybe trying to kill her? Nope. When the Concorde gets to France, a rogue military aircraft fires more missles at it. Again, the expert flying of Captain Joe Patroni (former machanic with taxiing clearance, and VP of the airline, who just happens to now have 30 years of flying experience) is able to defend the plane by (and I am not making this up) flying the plane upside down, opening the cockpit window, and firing flairs at the heatseeking missle. Does Maggie realize what is happening? Nope. The plane lands in Paris for an overnight layover. Does Maggie do anything? Nope. Does she send the copies of the evidence she has to a safe place in Paris? You guessed it, nope. She gets on the plane with the evidence the next afternoon for the rest of the trip. Meanwhile, Robert Wagner gets somebody to sabotage the Concorde while it is sitting on the tarmack by dressing as a mechanic. During the flight the cargo bay door is opened remotely and brings the plane down, but not before Patroni and his crew are able to land the plane on the slope of one of the Alps on a carpet of snow. Maggie finally decides to spill the beans and all is well.

I think the reason they stopped making the Airport films was because they were running out of viable d-list celebrates to populate the passenger seats, case in point, this film has Martha Raye, Eddie Albert, Jimmy "Dynomite" Walker, and *shudder* Charo.