Top 10 All-Time Favorite Flight-based movies

Updated on July 25, 2022 14:31 PM by Ava Sara

Flights – A modern means of transportation, the evergreen topic for stand-up comedians, and a central theme for some of the remarkable movies ever made. This blog presents the top 10 movies based on planes.

However, the irony or the funny part is that you'll never see any of these movies in actual airplanes as they would upset most of the passengers. But that's the thread connected to these highly diverse movies – The sheer terror and thrill of the perfect dramatic means to make scares, chills, and big laughs.

Snakes on a Plane

The Snakes on a Plane is a dopey action-thriller with a killer hook – What will happen in case terrible guys lose so many dangerous snakes on a flight just to kill a single passenger and only Samuel L. Jackson can save the day? This is B-movie nonsense filled with cheeky self-awareness. It is so bad that it is good.

The film gets a shock from its aviophobia, ophidiophobia, and claustrophobic premises. No doubt, all the snakes in this film look entirely fake, but when they attack the passengers in ghastly, creative ways, you'll feel a FanHouse, giddy glee to what follows. Jackson might have felt tired of those crazy snakes, but you'll not.

Red Eyes

Horrormeister West Craven changed gears for this close-quarters thriller which takes its leading character's fear of flights to scary new levels. Rachel McAdams plays the character of Lisa, a hotel manager who became friends with a co-passenger Jackson, played by Cillian Murphy.

She instantly learns that it isn't a random encounter but planned. He takes her hostage and pursues her to help him with a terrorist plan; if she doesn't comply, he'll kill her father.

Red Eyes discloses a Hitchcockian vibe where Lisa and the audience are trapped on the plane as our leading lady tries to outsmart her clever adversary 30,000 above from the ground.

Hell’s Angels

All those who have seen The Aviator movie are well aware of the story behind the making of Hell's Angels – how unusual millionaire Howard Hughes spent all his fortune and life years to produce a film he hoped would be the most realistic air-combat film ever made.

While it is not a great movie, the dogfight scenes are still a world experience. Our eyes have been so accustomed to absorbing terabytes of CGI trickery that it's shocking and also pleasant to see this World War drama I where real pilots are flying real planes where the real cameraman shoots them.

The specialty of this movie is that nothing in this movie comes from a computer as well as high wire intensity is breathtaking. The shooting was risky as hell as it needed 87 planes and 187 pilots; three pilots even died during the shoot.

Hughes' mad vision became an inspiration for many future cinematic assaults, especially the helicopter raid in Apocalypse Now.

Flight

Not much of this Oscar-nominated movie happens on a plane. But whatever part is on the plane is, oh my God, terrifying. Denzel Washington plays the character of Whip. He is an alcoholic pilot who has to take immediate action when his plane malfunctions during a flight.

Everyone else has to deal with the after-effects of his risky crash landing, which reveals his addiction and inspires deep introspection.

Real-life pilots call the movie unrealistic on several levels. Its opening aerial sequence can be regarded as the most frightening ever shot. Still, its director Robert Zemeckis and his technical magicians force you to clutch your armrest so tight that you don't have any time or energy left to split hairs about the details.

Sully

This is a biopic of a popular airline pilot Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger. In Sully, two movies go hand in hand – one where Sully, played by Tom Hanks, is facing an investigation for the 2009 emergency landing he did in the Hudson River, where all his passengers were safe.

Second is Sully's s daring landing of a US Airways flight where both the engines stopped working, and doom was looming on the flight.

It seems director Clint Eastwood took an oath not to let you breathe even for a fraction of a second. Sully's realistic representation makes the crash much more terrifying. Once you watch this movie, you'll fall in love with how calmly Sully handles intense pressure.

Air Force One

The era of the 90s was when every second action movie was inspired by a guy trapped in a …….formula. one of the most successful films based on this formula was Air Force One.

Harrison Ford played the US President character who gets trapped on his aircraft when a group of terrorists led by Gary Oldman takes him hostage.

Wolfgang Peterson and Ford were at the height of their career when this movie was released. It is an old-school Hollywood where one suspense sequence leads to another.

Top Gun

Once Top Gun was out, nobody could ever look at Tom Cruise or the navy pilots the same way again. Director Tony Scott's super-melodramatic, high-flying is analyzed to death.

Top Gun can be said to be an 80s movie that was released in the 1980s where a hotshot flyboy Maverick played by Cruise, and his mates go through an elite training program in times when they are free from playing football or teasing gals.

Even decades later, viewers find the flight sequences still amazing, and it has the best aerial fight scenes after Star Wars. No movie could ever be made flying look so awesome as this one.

United 93

Airline travel was completely changed after the 9/11 terror attack. This sobering, tense representation of that eventful day shows the horror and heroism that took place. In the middle of some impossible circumstances. Before United 93, its director Paul Green grass was well known for his movie, The Bourne Supremacy.

The movie is about how the passengers on United 93 fought back the terrorists who hijacked their plane, not letting them fulfill their plan. It swings to and fro between the ground and the flight.

The Right Stuff

While the movie is rightly apt remembered as the story about the first astronauts of America yet significant part of the movie deals with the essential steps they had to go through beforehand they could get ready for space.

This Oscar-winning movie's flight sequences remain utterly stirring as the audience watches Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier.

While so many movies depict the exhilaration and danger of flying, this one captures patriotism, daredevil spirit, and guts that are the basis of pilots' every decision.

Airplane

This one is an 87-minute masterpiece that takes everything which is nerve-wracking and irritating about flying and creates some of the most brilliant stupid gags of all time to grace the big screen. Airplane helped make self-aware, smart-ass comedy that celebrated a cheeky enthusiasm and complete irreverence.

So much has changed in the last four decades, but the movie's gags about terrible airline food, annoying seatmates, weirdly serious pilots, and more are timeless.