What model Boeing Airplane was used in this movie AIRPLANE 1980 1. The Boeing 707 used in the movie was a re-painted TWA airliner. 2. During the 50's and 60's the holy grail of aircraft manufacturers was to build the elusive 'DC-3 replacement'. Probably the aircraft which came closest to achieving this goal with world-wide sales was designed by a European manufacturer and was called the: Fokker Friendship When the Fokker Friendship first flew in 1955 it quickly impressed airlines with its performance and economics. It was aimed at the short haul market which at this time was dominated by piston engine types. Fokker had noted the success of the Viscount and adopted Rolls Royce Dart turboprops as power plants using two which were mounted on a high wing. This and the same large elliptical windows of the Viscount offered passengers unprecedented views from an aircraft in this configuration. Fokker signed a deal with Fairchild which manufactured the type as the F 27/227 and sold 173 on the North American market. Initially they wanted to sell it with piston engines, but in view of airline experience with Viscounts and the advice of Fokker they went with turbos. The Friendship was re-launched in the 80s with a new power plant and was called the F 50. A total of 786 Friendships were built by the time Fokker went into receivership in 1986.
The Fokker Fellowship was very successful short haul twinjet introduced as a successor to the Friendship in the 60s.
The Handley Page Dart Herald was a similar type to the Friendship but never achieved the success of the latter because it was initially marketed with piston engines and by the time HP realised their error and switched to turbo's they had missed the boat.
The Vickers Viking was a DC-3 contemporary based on the wartime Wellington bomber used mainly in the European market.

3. Why do they turn the lights out on takeoff and landing?
Believe it or not, they do this so your eyes will adjust to lower levels of light. If there's an accident and they have to deploy the emergency slides, studies have shown that you'll be able to see better and thus be able to evacuate more quickly and safely.

4. The saying “whole nine yards “ came from what situation? WWII In the pacific theatre, Navy fighters carried 27 feet of ammunition in each wing. When they gave enemy planes everything they had, they gave them "The whole nine yards".

5. What company developed the Pilots check list?
The Birth of the Pilot's Check List
On October 30, 1935, at Wright Air Field in Dayton, Ohio, the U.S. Army Air Corps held a flight competition for airplane manufacturers vying to build its next-generation long-range bomber. It wasn't supposed to be much of a competition. In early evaluations, the Boeing Corporation's gleaming aluminum-alloy Model 299 had trounced the designs of Martin and Douglas. Boeing's plane could carry five times as many bombs as the Army had requested; it could fly faster than previous bombers, and almost twice as far.

A Seattle newspaperman who had glimpsed the plane called it the "flying fortress," and the name stuck. The flight "competition," according to the military historian Phillip Meilinger, was regarded as a mere formality. The Army planned to order at least sixty-five of the aircraft.

A small crowd of Army brass and manufacturing executives watched as the Model 299 test plane taxied onto the runway. It was sleek and impressive, with a hundred-and-three-foot wingspan and four engines jutting out from the wings, rather than the usual two. The plane roared down the tarmac, lifted off smoothly and climbed sharply to three hundred feet. Then it stalled, turned on one wing and crashed in a fiery explosion. Two of the five crew members died, including the pilot, Major Ployer P. Hill (thus Hill AFB, Ogden, UT).

An investigation revealed that nothing mechanical had gone wrong. The crash had been due to "pilot error," the report said. Substantially more complex