Panic in the Skies (1996)
The cockpit of a Boeing 747 is struck by lightning during takeoff for a flight to Europe, fatally injuring the flight crew. Laurie, the senior flight attendant, enlists the aid of passenger Brett Young. They determine that the autopilot can bring the plane in for a landing, but soon learn that the autopilot is locking onto the transponders of airfields at random, including signals from small airports with runways too short to accommodate the jumbo jet. Meanwhile, federal officials on the ground who have lost radio contact with the jet debate whether the plane should be shot down to prevent a more disastrous crash in a heavily populated area.
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Who cares if it's utterly, utterly ridiculous and implausible? Never heard of "the willing suspension of disbelief"? It is a miserably wet November afternoon, but "Panic In The Skies" has cheered me enormously. With more cheese than a pile of ripening socks, and enough improbability to drive Heisenberg to drink, this film has to set some sort of clichés-per-minute record, which I suspect will never be challenged. Astounding effort. I give this one ten out of ten for the mad dog alone. I hated "CHiPS" because I thought Erik Estrada was rubbish; I loved "PITS" (somehow appropriate?) for much the same reason - Erik was truly in his element here. A simple rule for life: don't get on a plane if you recognise one of the flight attendants from TV.
I watched this movie the other night on Lifetime Network only because I was expecting a classically bad made for TV movie. And I was not disappointed! Nothing in the movie makes a lick of sense and every possible disaster in air cliché is employed. Some of the scenes were just mind-numbing like the finale when the plane comes in to land. Whats with all of the emergency equipment lined up directly in the line of the landing! If you are looking for a good hoot like I was, then watch this movie. If not, then don't waste two hours of your life. One casting note. The best character was Erik Estrada playing an action movie matinée idol. What a hoot.
Well, this movie is somewhat entertaining or boring. What's your opinion? There a lot of errors about the aircraft and a lot of other stuff. The aircraft, a Boeing 747, has a lot of errors in it. The plane would change its color from the Executive Decision livery, to plain white color, and finally red, white, and blue and with the "Royce Air" words. I don't even see any control wheel on the flight deck of the aircraft. The flight deck don't even look like the what the 747 has. As you look closely in the cockpit, you could see that the instruments are all burned up and so are the pilots. The pilots look like burnt charcoal. Why would a laptop control a 747? The oxygen masks came from the back of every seat instead of coming from the overhead. I don't know what else to say about the movie, because I haven't seen it in four years. I saw this film from the Fox Family channel before it became ABC family. Anyway, this film does kill time when you are bored.
I saw this movie after the Payne Stewart incident. Even though some of the special effects were fake it made me think about what the people would be feeling. It was pretty good. Of course I tuned in because of Kate Jackson and was not disappointed! She was solid as usual. I would definitely recommend it. Thumbs up!