One of the great suspense story ideas, indeed the whole genre of suspense-thriller disaster films, began with a story developed aboard a long airline flight from Winnipeg Manitoba, to Toronto Ontario in 1955.
Arthur Hailey was Canadian tractor-trailer promotional sales executive and one-time editor of a trade magazine called Bus and Truck Transport. He would later become an immensely famous novelist and screenwriter. Beginning with that flight.
An RAF pilot during the war, he had flown patrol fighters and twin-engine transport planes. Post-war he emigrated to Canada in 1947.
On the boring and somewhat noisy flight across the wilderness of northern Ontario in 1955, he began to wonder if something happened to the flight crew, would he, a rusty former pilot, be able to land the larger four-engined Canadair North Star?
By the time he landed, he had the idea for a story.
It became a screen play “Flight into Danger”, broadcast live as a theatrical piece on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) on this date, April 3, 1956.
The story takes place aboard the long trans-Canada flight from Toronto to Vancouver, the pilot and co-pilot along with half the passengers, become violently ill and incapacitated from food poisoning.
A salesman, a rusty WWII fighter pilot (James Doohan- later Scotty of Star Trek fame) is asked to take over. He fights an unfamiliar large plane, a storm, his own wartime flashbacksand demons, and concerns over his son who has also become violently ill.
Beginning of the suspense-thriller disaster film concept
It was widely viewed in Canada where this “new” type of suspense thriller received excellent reviews.
In 1957, the US bought the screenplay and called it Zero Hour for one of their televised dramas. It was re-staged in many other countries as well including the BBC in 1962 and in 1964 in Germany “Flug in Gefahr,.
It was later turned into a novel, “Runway Zero-Eight” in 1958-59, and that in turn became a 1971 American “Movie of the Week”, called Terror in the Sky.
The idea, developed on this Canadian flight became the core concept which sparked the whole genre of thriller disaster films, including to some extent, another Hailey mega-hit “Airport”.
In 1974, an American comedy troupe bought the rights to Zero Hour/Flight into Danger and a few years later, in 1980, came out with the hit comedy spoof, Airplane.
It was almost a direct scene by scene spoof of the Canadian inspired Zero Hour and interestingly starred Canadian born comedian Leslie Neilson.
Zero Hour Trailer (YouTube)
Hailey wrote 11 books, including “Airport”, “Hotel”, “Wheels, and “The Moneychangers”. He died in 2004 at age 84
Additional information-sources
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