Terror in the Sky is a low budget 1971

1971 in film

The year 1971 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*February 8 - Bob Dylan's hour long documentary film, Eat the Document, premieres at New York's Academy of Music...

 television movie

Television movie

A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...

 remake of 1957's Zero Hour!

Zero Hour!

Zero Hour! is a 1957 movie whose screenplay was written by Arthur Hailey, starring Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, and Sterling Hayden, and released by Paramount Pictures. Zero Hour! was an adaptation of Hailey's 1956 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation play Flight into Danger...

, which itself was based on the 1956 television play Flight into Danger

Flight into Danger

Flight into Danger is a 1956 Canadian television film starring Corinne Conley, James Doohan , Kate Reid, Zachary Scott and Philip Gilbert...

. Arthur Hailey

Arthur Hailey

Arthur Hailey was a British/Canadian novelist.- Biography :Born in Luton, Bedfordshire, England, Hailey served in the Royal Air Force from the start of World War II during 1939 until 1947, when he went to live in Canada. Hailey's last novel, Detective , is a mystery told from the perspective of a...

 recycled the premise in his book Runway Zero-Eight which was co-written with John Castle in 1958. Terror in the Sky starred Doug McClure

Doug McClure

Douglas Osborne "Doug" McClure was an American actor whose career in film and television extended from the 1950s to the 1990s...

, Lois Nettleton

Lois Nettleton

Lois June Nettleton was an American actress of film, stage, and television. She was Miss Chicago of 1948 as well as a semifinalist at that year's Miss America Pageant.-Early years:...

, Roddy McDowall

Roddy McDowall

Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude "Roddy" McDowall was an English actor and photographer. His film roles included Cornelius and Caesar in the Planet of the Apes film series...

, Leif Erickson

Leif Erickson

Leif Erickson was an American film and television actor.-Background:Leif Erickson was born William Wycliffe Anderson in Alameda, California. His father was commander of a fleet of ships and his mother was a noted newspaperwoman and writer...

, Kenneth Tobey

Kenneth Tobey

Kenneth Tobey was an American stage, television, and film actor.-Early years:Born in Oakland, California, Tobey was headed for a law career when he first dabbled in acting at the University of California Little Theater...

, and Keenan Wynn

Keenan Wynn

Keenan Wynn was an American character actor. His bristling mustache and expressive face were his stock in trade, and though he rarely had a lead role, he got prominent billing in most of his film and TV parts....

.

Plot

Passengers on a plane headed from the Midwest to the West Coast (Winnipeg to Vancouver in the book; Minneapolis to Seattle in the film) get quite ill after eating the Chicken Pot Pie entree. Both pilots also ate the chicken. A man who hasn't flown since the Vietnam War (single-engine planes in the book, helicopter/war choppers in the film) is reluctantly pressed into flying the plane, where he makes a very neurotic, but survivable landing. The theme would be used again in Airplane!

Airplane!

Airplane! is a 1980 American satirical comedy film directed and written by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker and released by Paramount Pictures...

, which was a spoof of the movie classic Zero Hour!.