Did You Know?

The Magnavox Magnavision VLP optical videodisc player shown in the film was Lew Wasserman's personal player and was borrowed from his office for the day of shooting. It was a hand-built pre-production model that was given the "7000" model number. The entire top of the player opens instead of just a small "lid" portion and the disc area has a clear window so you can see the disc spinning. For the final player release (model 8000), the lid was shrunk to only the disc area and the transparent window was eliminated. The player used in the film could not play CLV Extended Play discs as the the CLV format had not yet been finalized. The single-sided disc placed on the player contained the actual recording of James Stewart seen in the film - MCA Disco-Vision pressed the one-off disc just for the film. The packaging for the disc is a so-called "Nautilus Box" inside a standard cardboard box used to transport MCA Records Nickel-plated LP stampers. Monica Lewis uses the player incorrectly. She doesn't shut the lid completely and presses one of the "audio" buttons instead of the "Play Forward" button.

To prepare for his role, Jack Lemmon attended both diving school and flight training school. As Jack Lemmon stated for his flight training, "I wanted to know what all the knobs and dials were for."

Along with its fellow sequels Airport 1975 and The Concorde... Airport '79 this film was inducted into the RAZZIE Awards' Hall of Shame in 1983.

Christopher Lee accepted his role chiefly because it allowed him to work with Jack Lemmon.

James Stewart and George Kennedy have both acted together in two films about airplane disasters the other being Flight of The Phoenix(1965).

The third of four movies in the "Airport" series.