---
title: "Airport"
year: 1970
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/airport"
fi1m_score: 56
critics_score: 52
critics_reviews: 8
published: "2026-09-20T05:31:03.852011+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-20T05:31:28.634307+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Airport (1970)

Directed by George Seaton · 2h 17m · MPA G · Drama, Thriller, Action

**Fi1m score: 56** · Critics 52 from 8 reviews

*In a sentence:* Everyone at this airport is having an affair except the bomber, and he is the one you end up feeling for

> George Seaton’s glossy adaptation of Arthur Hailey’s bestseller spends most of its 137 minutes on marriages and only the last stretch on the aeroplane. Helen Hayes, Maureen Stapleton and Van Heflin earn their keep; the rest is a long wait at the gate.

## Synopsis

A blizzard has half-closed an American airport, and a jet has slid off the taxiway, blocking the main runway. Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster) has to keep the place open while his wife Cindy (Dana Wynter) rings to remind him he has missed another charity dinner. Pilot Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin) is to fly the night flight to Rome with stewardess Gwen Meighen (Jacqueline Bisset), who has news for him. Joe Patroni (George Kennedy) is called out to dig the stuck plane free. Ada Quonsett (Helen Hayes), an elderly widow with a routine, slips past the gate without a ticket. And D. O. Guerrero (Van Heflin), broke and desperate, buys a life insurance policy and a seat on the Rome flight, carrying a briefcase he will not put down.

## Review

George Seaton’s *Airport*, adapted from Arthur Hailey’s novel and produced by Ross Hunter, runs 137 minutes and spends perhaps forty of them on the thing its title promises. The rest is a series of marriages in trouble, most of them conducted over the telephone. This is the film that set the pattern for a decade of pictures in which famous people are put inside a large machine that then goes wrong, and watching it now it is plain that the machine came second. Hailey’s book was a compendium of how an airport runs, and Seaton’s screenplay keeps the facts and treats the people as the padding between them.

The marriages first, since the film insists. Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster) is trying to keep the airport open through a snowstorm while his wife Cindy (Dana Wynter) rings to complain and Tanya Livingston (Jean Seberg) waits in his office with a coffee and a look. Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin) has a wife, Sarah (Barbara Hale), at home and a stewardess, Gwen Meighen (Jacqueline Bisset), on his flight. Lancaster plays every scene with his jaw set, as if the divorce were a runway closure to be managed, and Martin coasts on the voice. Seaton stages the phone calls in split screen, two faces side by side, so we can watch two people be unhappy at once. We were bored by the Bakersfelds, and then irritated, because the film keeps returning to them as though it thought they were the story.

The story is elsewhere, and it belongs to two supporting players. Van Heflin plays D. O. Guerrero as a man who has already lost, hunched and sweating, hugging a briefcase in a departure lounge full of people with somewhere to go. And we were moved, more than we expected to be, by Maureen Stapleton, who has perhaps ten minutes as his wife Inez, brought into the terminal and questioned about him, and spends them apologising to everyone who questions her for something she has not done. It is the one performance in the film that seems to come from a shabby, real life rather than from a lobby card.

Helen Hayes is the other reason to stay. Her Ada Quonsett is a stowaway who has turned it into a craft, and the scene in which she talks round Peter Coakley (John Findlater), the young clerk assigned to keep an eye on her, is the lightest and best-written thing in the film. We laughed, and did not feel foolish about it. George Kennedy’s Joe Patroni, cigar clamped and voice raised, is the only person on screen who appears to enjoy his job, and the business of getting the stuck jet off the runway is the film’s best piece of ground-level staging.

The craft is expensive and mostly flat. Ernest Laszlo shoots the terminal wide and bright, the snow blue-white beyond the glass, and lights the interiors as evenly as a department store, so that nothing has a shadow to hide in. Edith Head puts Bisset and Seberg in sharp airline tailoring and Wynter in furs, which tells you who the film thinks is on the wrong side. Alfred Newman announces each change of strand with brass. Stuart Gilmore cuts between the plots every few minutes, so no scene runs long enough to build anything, and the picture proceeds like a well-run departures board.

Then the flight leaves, and for the last stretch the film becomes what it should have been all along. We will not describe what happens in the cabin, but it is tense, it is cleanly staged, and Seaton, who made [*Miracle on 34th Street*](https://film.one/film/miracle-on-34th-street) in 1947 and knew how to run a crowded public room, finally has a room he can run. Against the disaster pictures that followed, *Airport* is talkier and less spectacular, and it treats its ordinary passengers as scenery. Most critics have been split down the middle, and we can see why: half of this is a decent thriller and half is a magazine serial.

Watch it for Hayes, Stapleton and Heflin, and for the last forty minutes. For the first ninety, keep a phone nearby, which is roughly what the characters do.

*Fi1m score 56, published 20 September 2026.*

### Reviews we read (8)

- **Empire**, Ian Nathan (70/100, inferred): The critic views the film as the trailblazer for disaster-soap hybrids and a progenitor of the blockbuster, crediting director George Seaton with building tension amid preposterous acting and soapy melodrama. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/airport-review/)
- **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (65/100, inferred): The critic found the film kept him interested on a dumb fundamental level despite few surprises and predictable plotting. He singled out Helen Hayes and Van Heflin for bringing wit and humanity to their roles amid the stiff performances and glossy production. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/airport-1970)
- **Radio Times**, John Ferguson (3/5): The critic finds it hard to take the sprawling disaster movie seriously after Airplane!, especially with George Kennedy's later comic roles, but praises the starry cast including Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin and Oscar-winner Helen Hayes for staying commendably serious. The result is competent, soapy entertainment. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-xjhsv7/airport/)
- **Variety** (50/100, inferred): The review called the film a handsome, often dramatically involving $10 million epitaph to a bygone brand of filmmaking, over-produced with a long cast of stars in a glossy, slick style. It noted that the central suspense situation fails to create real tension because the audience knows the outcome in advance. [Read](https://variety.com/1969/film/reviews/airport-1200422292/)
- **Time Out**, TM (40/100, inferred): This is the first in a ghastly series from Arthur Hailey's bestseller, featuring a mad bomber on the Rome flight and a collection of cardboard characters with pop-up problems, along with rampant clichés. The efficient cast is at least a mercy amid the snow-bound flying conditions and personal dramas. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/airport)
- **The New Yorker**, Pauline Kael (30/100, inferred): The critic described the film as vacuous with the dull innocence of an accounting error, lacking electricity, smart talk, or flair. She singled out Maureen Stapleton as the only performer who suggests a human being amid the stereotyped roles and clichéd reactions. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1970/03/21/the-current-cinema-8)
- **The New York Times**, Vincent Canby (30/100, inferred): The critic called the film an immensely silly multi-plot, multi-star soap opera that feels like a 137-minute television commercial. He noted its superficial contemporaneity, breathless pacing, and chock-full irrelevant facts while praising Helen Hayes' outrageous performance as the stowaway. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/06/archives/the-screen-multiplot-multistar-airport-openslancaster-and-martin-in.html)
- **Collider**, Lloyd Farley (75/100, inferred): The piece positions the 1970 film as the successful launch of the disaster-movie golden age and a must-see for cinephiles and genre fans. It highlights the star ensemble and Helen Hayes' Oscar-winning turn as a standout element amid the franchise's later decline. [Read](https://collider.com/airport-movie-franchise/)

## Details

- **Director:** George Seaton
- **Director:** George Seaton
- **Screenplay:** George Seaton
- **Novel:** Arthur Hailey
- **Cinematography:** Ernest Laszlo
- **Editor:** Stuart Gilmore
- **Music:** Alfred Newman
- **Costume design:** Edith Head
- **Producer:** Ross Hunter
- **Cast:** Burt Lancaster as Mel Bakersfeld; Dana Wynter as Cindy Bakersfeld; Dean Martin as Vernon Demerest; Barbara Hale as Sarah Demerest; Jean Seberg as Tanya Livingston; Jacqueline Bisset as Gwen Meighen; George Kennedy as Joe Patroni; Jodean Lawrence as Marie Patroni
- **Runtime:** 2h 17m
- **Certificate (MPA):** G
- **Release (the US):** 29 May 1970
- **Genres:** Drama, Thriller, Action
- **Budget:** $10 million
- **Box office:** $100 million

## Where to watch in the US

- Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd
- Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy $4.99, hd
- Apple TV: buy $14.99, hd

*Checked 2026-09-20.*

Also available in: AT, AU, CA, DE, FR, GB, IE, IL, IN, JP, NZ, SG, TH, US, VN. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Academy Awards 1971: Best Cinematography (nominated); Best Costume Design (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Original Score (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Production Design (nominated); Best Sound (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (won)

## If you liked this

- *The High and the Mighty* (1954): The earlier aeroplane-in-trouble picture, with John Wayne and less time on divorces.
- *Juggernaut* (1974): Richard Lester’s bomb-on-a-liner thriller, drier, faster and better acted than its cousins.
- *The Towering Inferno* (1974), Fi1m 68: The all-star disaster formula perfected, with a building that actually threatens its cast. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-towering-inferno.md)
- *Grand Hotel* (1932): The original many-stars-one-building soap opera, and the ancestor of all this.
- *Airplane!* (1980), Fi1m 89: The spoof that made this film impossible to watch straight ever again. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/airplane.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/airport