Airport 9 pages

George Seaton's Airport (1970) is the modern disaster movie's foundation document — an ensemble film built from parallel workplace crises during a single brutal night at a Chicago-area airport, with Burt Lancaster managing the ground and Dean Martin managing the cockpit while Van Heflin's bomb threat ties the two together.

Airport (1970) is the film's hub page.

Analysis

• Plot Structure (Airport) — the Two Approaches reading.
• Backbeats (Airport) — the full beat-by-beat breakdown structured by the Two Approaches rivets.
• Pelham and Airport Swimlanes — side-by-side structural comparison with Joseph Sargent's The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (1974). Both films in the same Two Approaches quadrant (better/sufficient); both stage a senior manager protagonist at an institutional command desk. Pelham reads as the subway version of the Hailey ensemble-disaster template Airport established.