Airplane! Airplane! Airplane! (alternatively titled Flying High!) is a 1980 American satirical disaster film written and directed by David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, and produced by Jon Davison. It stars Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty and features Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Lorna Patterson. The film is a parody of the disaster film genre, particularly the 1957 Paramount film "Zero Hour!", from which it borrows the plot and the central characters, as well as many elements from "Airport 1975" and other films in the "Airport" film series. The film is known for its
Swallow Airplane Company departure of Emil Matthew Laird in 1923 and his formation of the E. M. Laird Airplane Company, the company was renamed as the Swallow Airplane Mfg Co. Swallow was notable for producing the Swallow TP in quite large numbers, for its day. A large proportion of pilots trained in the late 1920s and early '30s did so on the TP. In late 1927, owner Mollendick bet most of the company fortune on a record setting aircraft flown by noted aviator William Portwood Erwin, the Dallas Spirit, which was lost on a record attempt to Asia concurrent with the Dole Air