Flight into Danger
| Flight Into Danger | |
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Promotional poster
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| Directed by | Gabriel Axel |
| Produced by | David Greene |
| Written by | Arthur Hailey |
| Starring |
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| Cinematography | Len Macdonald |
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Production
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| Distributed by | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) |
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Release date
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Running time
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60 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $18,000 (Canadian) |
Flight into Danger is a 1956 Canadian television film starring James Doohan, Corinne Conley, Kate Reid, Zachary Scott and Philip Gilbert. It was written by Arthur Hailey, produced and screened by CBC Television, and broadcast on April 3, 1956, on the General Motors Theatre series.
While on a flight from Toronto, Ontario, to Vancouver, British Columbia, the pilots at the controls of a Canadair North Star, a large commercial airliner, fall victim to food poisoning. Approximately half of the passengers have also been incapacitated by eating the same fish served to the pilots. After the stewardess (Corinne Conley) asks for help from the passengers, George Spencer (James Doohan), an ex-Second World War Spitfire fighter pilot, is forced to take over. His wife (Kate Reid) is able to help him at the controls, but he is worried about his sick son. A storm over Vancouver makes matters worse, with George not only having to overcome harrowing wartime flashbacks, but also struggling with the controls of an unfamiliar aircraft, in order to bring the airliner down safely.
Playwright Hailey, a former British pilot in the Second World War, immigrated to Canada in 1947. He began working as a sales promotion manager for a tractor-trailer manufacturer in Toronto. On a flight between Vancouver and Toronto in 1955, he came up with the original idea that spawned Flight into Danger. The story of an airliner whose passengers and crew were threatened by an unforeseen event such as food poisoning was written in only nine days and shopped about as a screenplay. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, barely four years old, bought the script for $600.
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