Goofs

The Beech Baron's ID number is N9750Y, as you can clearly see every time they show the plane in flight, but every time Scott (the pilot) communicates with Air Traffic Control, the plane is addressed as Baron 232Z.

After the collision, Captain Stacy turns the auto-pilot "A" switch on manual, leaving the "B" off. But in following shots, the two buttons switch positions and Nancy turns on and off the "B" switch.

As Flight 409 approaches Salt Lake City, it is dawn. However, some interior shots showing total darkness outside are followed by exterior shots of the plane flying in sunlight.

At the end of the film, the shot of the hole in the plane shows touched-up gray paint and no hole in the cockpit fuselage.

When the flight crew commence final checks before attempting to land in Salt Lake City prior to the accident, through the window there is a night sky. However, in the very next shot, the Boeing 747 is seen flying into clouds in the daylight.

There is a major concern that the little girl who needs the kidney transplant will die because she will be off her dialysis machine for too long. A normal dialysis schedule is four hours, three times per week. If the girl was removed from a dialysis machine a few hours before boarding the plane, she would have two to three days before her next required treatment with no risk, even if she had total kidney failure.

Joe Patroni says at one point that the 747 has a 13,000-foot mountain right ahead of it. The tallest mountain in the Wasatch Range in Utah, Mount Nebo, is a shade under 12,000 feet.

When Captain Stacy was ordered to turn right by air traffic control, he manipulates a knob at the center console. The knob shown is actually the rudder trim knob which is not used to operate the autopilot. The autopilot controls are located at the front panel.

When the 747 is coming in for the landing at Salt Lake City, the passengers are not in the "brace" crash position. As there was damage to the plane, an engine out and problems with braking control, prudence would have dictated that the crew would have had the passengers in the "brace" crash position.

When the air traffic controller asks Nancy to look at "the third fuel used gauge" on the engineer's panel, she reports "22500 pounds". However, this doesn't indicate a fuel leak, since it's from the fuel USED gauge. The number on the gauge to the right, 24530, is what indicates a fuel leak, as more fuel has been used from that tank than the others.

In Airport (1970), Joe Patroni mentioned that his wife was named Marie and he had five children, but in this film, his wife is renamed Helen and he has just one son. In The Concorde... Airport '79 (1979), Patroni mentions his wife has died in a car accident and he only has one son.

Joe divorced Marie and married Helen, who later died in a car accident. Joe only has one son with Helen, but five daughters from his first marriage to Marie.

When Ed Nelson is lowered from a military helicopter on a flimsy tether line, he does not have a parachute - an oversight no Air Force commander would ever allow to occur.

Just before Al Murdoch suits up, he is specifically told that he cannot wear a parachute because of the risk of it deploying if it gets snagged, and interfering with the plane's engines. This would be the exact same for Ed Nelson.

Nancy is being given too much to do. A second person (another flight attendant or even a passenger) should be talking to ATC so Nancy wouldn't have to both fly the plane and communicate with ATC.

Nancy is a flight attendant in a moment of crisis, she doesn't know all of the correct protocols that she should be doing, and given the circumstances, manages to do a good job of dealing with things.

It is mentioned that 120 lives are at stake on the plane. A 747 seats over 400, so there should be a lot of empty seats on the plane.

We do not see every seat on the plane, we are only shown the portion of the plane with passengers in it, the rest of the plane could be empty.

Gloria Swanson mentions a flight "nonstop from Hollywood to Pasadena". Neither city has ever had an airport, although Burbank Airport (re-named Bob Hope Airport in 2003) was called Hollywood-Burbank Airport from 1967 to 1978 and Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport from 1978 to 2003.

She is talking about taking a flight during the silent movie era in a biplane, there didn't need to be an airport in either location because at that time neither city was heavily developed and the plane could have just landed in a field.

When the two passengers look out the right side of the 747, they notice fuel leaking from the wing. However, when it reaches the rear flaps, some of the fuel simply drips vertically down off the rear edge of the wing, indicating no rearward airflow to the underside of the wing, revealing the 747 is motionless.

The passengers on board watch the pilot being winched from the jet helicopter into the 747. However, this would be impossible from the angle in which we see the helicopter flying and the position of the passengers seated on board.

As the 747 approaches the end of the runway at Salt Lake, it swerves to the left. Inside the airplane, all the passenger are thrown to the left, toward the inside of the turn.

Alan Murdoch and Joe Patroni leave the air traffic control center to board the helicopter; in the next shot, the plane goes over a mountaintop. Following this, when passengers are shown aboard Flight 409 looking directly forward, crew members can be heard in the background giving instructions to the actors. A crew member quite clearly says, "Yeah."

When the physician is discussing the heart transplant, the abdominal x-ray behind him shown over his left shoulder is hanging upside down.

Obvious dummy when one of the pilots gets sucked out of the cockpit.

The passengers on board are very quiet. A Hollywood legend, Gloria Swanson is flying and no one on board seems to want to talk with her or grab an autograph during the flight.

Charlton Heston's character, happens to be the only experienced pilot in range when his girlfriends flight lands in trouble.

When Gary says "Whatever happened to womanhood?" his lips do not move.

When the pilot is being winched from the jet helicopter into the 747, inside the cockpit, the roar of the helicopter engine or blades is not heard.

Al Murdoch is obviously dubbed over in the first scene. His lips do not match all of his words.

The plane takes off from Washington Dulles Airport in complete darkness, in the early hours of the morning. It heads west to Los Angeles, however, on the exterior shots of the plane flying west, dawn is seen rising in the west and not the east.

The wife of the Baron pilot is seen at the Salt Lake City airport with a TV reporter. However, according the the plot, she lived in Boise, Idaho, which is more than 300 miles away. If the local airport was closed due to bad weather, there is no way she would be able to make it to Salt Lake in such a short amount of time.

The 747 landing shots alternate between Salt Lake City and another airport. In one shot, a huge piece of equipment to the right of the runway is seen, and in another shot, it's gone, etc. After the landing, the evacuation takes place at a completely different airport.

How was the chief engineers body moved from the cockpit without touching any debris. When the stewardess moves a piece later it almost cripples the controls.

When the pilot of the small plane starts having his heart attack, he clearly veers off to the right. Air traffic control appear to make no contact wondering why he is off course.