Airplane! watch as "Otto" takes control of the plane, inflates a female companion, and takes off. Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker (collectively known as Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, or ZAZ), wrote "Airplane!" while they were performing with the Kentucky Fried Theatre, a small theatre they had founded in 1971. To obtain material for comedy routines, they routinely recorded late night television and reviewed the tapes later primarily to pull the commercials, a process Abrahams compared to "seining for fish". During one such taping process, they unintentionally recorded the 1957 film "Zero Hour!", and while scanning the commercials, found that
Mozhaysky's airplane Mozhaysky's airplane Mozhaysky's airplane was an experimental Russian airplane designed and built by a naval officer, Alexander Mozhaysky (also transliterated as Mozhayski, Mozhaiski and Mozhayskiy). Powered by two steam engines, the monoplane design reputedly made a powered take off assisted by the use of a ramp, flying between near Krasnoye Selo, Russia in 1884. The aircraft was originally powered by two steam engines with a total power of . It had an estimated flight speed of , a gross weight of , a wingspan of and a fuselage length of . Tests were carried out over several years starting in