Airport

Burt Lancaster, who headlined the movie above the title with Dean Martin, made a great deal of money from the film, which was a huge hit. His contract gave him a 10% profit participation once the movie hit $50 million; it grossed $45.3 million in North America alone. Despite the financial windfall, Lancaster said that the movie was "the worst piece of junk ever made." He said he only made this film in return for the studio agreeing to finance several non-commercial films, in which he was interested.

Capt. Benson, the pilot of the Boeing 707 that gets stuck just off the runway, says "You might tell your mechanic that I've got three million miles in the air". Pilots do not their state experience level as "...miles in the air". Rather, they state it as "...hours in the air". All pilots are required by the FAA to keep a record of their total flight hours in a personal Pilot Logbook.

Unusually, the Universal Pictures logo animation is not shown at the beginning of this movie...it's instead shown at the end. The in-credit notice "UNIVERSAL presents" replaced the usual opening logo.

TV prints and early videotape pan and scan versions have alterations beyond simple pan and scan. On some of the multi image scenes, instead of panning to the image best serving the scene, they substitute a full screen version of that segment that was originally part of the multi image shot. Like the scene where Burt Lancaster is talking to his wife and 2 daughters all at once. The theatrical version(and present wide screen DVD) maintained images of his wife, him and both daughters separately(recent pan and scan editions temporarily letterbox or otherwise modify the theatrical composition). On the early TV and video versions, only the person talking is seen in a full screen shot used for that multi image shot(showing more image information then when it was composed as part of the theatrical multi image shot). Also, on the split screen shot of Dean Martin in a cab and Jackie Bisset getting out of the shower, the split screen is recomposed for 4:3, cropping each image to better fit.

Featured in Sneak Previews: Take 2: Movies That Changed the Movies (1979)