Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land

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Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land
Directed by	Jerry Jameson
Starring	Lee Majors Hal Linden
Release date(s)	1983
Running time	105 min.
Country	U.S.A.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land (re-released on video as Starflight One) is a 1983 television movie starring Lee Majors and Hal Linden. The first hypersonic transport is leaving for its inaugural flight from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia, a two-hour flight through the stratosphere.

[edit] Plot Outline

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Starflight is being prepared for a media-covered inaugural hypersonic flight from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia, a two-hour flight. The passengers bring some of their problems on board - the pilot, Cody Briggs (Majors), is unfaithful to his wife Janet (Tess Harper) and having an affair with the media relations representative for Thornwall Aviation, Erica Hansen (Lauren Hutton); Hal Parisi married another passenger because she won the trip on TV, but he's only interested in getting his stolen gold out of the country. Freddie Barrett (Terry Kiser) is trying to get his communications satellite launched from Australia to start his business carrying television signals. Starflight's take-off is delayed a short time so that the deceased Australian ambassador and his wife, Mrs. Winfield, can be taken aboard - Del (first officer) remembers that nothing good happened the last time a corpse came aboard his plane. Finally, Josh Gilliam, the designer (Hal Linden), has misgivings, wishing the engines were under ground control.

Freddie is told by his Aussie partner Bud Culver (Redmond Gleeson) that they can't launch because weather is closing in; they can't launch earlier because NASA hasn't cleared airspace due to Starflight's passage through it. Freddie tells Bud to launch before the weather closes them in, and never mind about NASA. If they don't launch that day, they'll lose their contracts.

The plane takes off, and so does Freddie's rocket, and climbs to some 23 miles above the ground using its scramjet engines, then levels off. Meanwhile, the rocket is having trouble with the second stage, and has to be destroyed. NASA had already detected the rising rocket, causing a problem for Starflight due to an incorrect course. When it's destroyed, it produces a million pieces of debris headed at Starflight.

Thornwall okays Cody letting NASA guide them; NASA's Chris Lucas recommends they climb, so Starflight engages its scramjet engines again. The rocket debris starts coming at them. One chunk hits the underside of the plane. When NASA says they're clear, Cody orders the jets shut off, but they keep firing: the collision severed the control cables. Now, they must wait until the hydrogen fuel runs out, but the timing is too close: they risk accelerating out of the atmosphere and into orbit; Gilliam was concerned that if there's a flaw in the plane's structure, it would break up.

The fuel runs out just as they clear the atmosphere and reach orbital velocity, and now Starflight is stuck in orbit. NASA believes their orbit is good for 48-60 hours, and they need to conserve power and other consumables. The space shuttle Columbia is sent up to try to help; it brings a supply of hydrogen to refuel Starflight, and an airlock is brought up with the intent to try and bring Josh Gilliam back to Earth to work on the problem. Pete, the flight engineer (Michael Sacks), suggests they need to test the airlock transfer, but the airlock hatch won`t close and it breaks free, sending Pete into the void. Cody is inspired by a reference in an idle, frustrated exchange with his mistress Erica, and sends Josh to Columbia inside the coffin of the ambassador. Columbia returns to Earth, landing at Thornwall's airfield (which had been upgraded for shuttle use) to be processed at Thornwall (which spent $93 million to build it, only to lose the contract to Culver Aviation due to industrial espionage).

Josh goes to work on the problem, and discovers Thornwall's universal docking tunnel, a flexible conduit that could be attached between Starflight and Columbia. Meanwhile, the stolen gold, busted out of its container as the plane topped the atmosphere, is forcing its way out of a damaged seal; Hal betrays his intentions to his bride, who reports it to the captain through Erica.

Columbia and six astronauts arrive with the tunnel, intending to rescue 20 passengers (26 people landing in the shuttle!), and five passengers, including Hal, are successfully brought through; the next five of a total of twenty, however, are lost when the tunnel burns up in space; the rippling tunnel swung close to a sparking electric line on Starflight`s underside. This leaves 47 aboard, six dead, and six rescued. When Columbia lands, Hal Parisi is arrested. Josh is frustrated, thinking he can`t bring them down. He tells his wife Nancy (Gail Strickland) he`d need a bus to bring them home; she says, send them a bus. He remembers a tank built by Culver Aviation, and hurries to propose using it. Q.T. Thornwall (Ray Milland) won`t hear of it, because of how Culver cost Thornwall money, but Q.T.`s son Martin stands up to his father and insists that Culver`s container is the only way. Columbia launches a third time, with the container, and takes 38 more of the passengers, leaving only nine aboard Starflight.

Cody sends Joe Pedowski (Pat Corley), the electrical engineer for Thornwall who worked on Starflight, outside in a space suit to repair the wiring, because Cody hopes to skip the plane into the atmosphere. Josh is trying to come up with a solution, then hits upon the way: a shuttle could drop into the atmosphere ahead of Starflight, with Starflight riding the plow-wave; the wingtips would burn a little.

Columbia can`t make another jump in time, but another shuttle, XU-5 (referred to as Columbia afterward in communications) is in orbit on a military satellite mission, and comes into position just a minute before Starflight is to hit the atmosphere.

The two craft ride in together, and once into the atmosphere, XU-5 veers off while Cody fights to keep Starflight under control in a wild descent with damaged wings. Josh hurries outside, not wanting to listen to the communications. However, after a few minutes of silence, he hears Starflight, and turns to see it heading for landing.

[edit] Production notes and comments

The movie made use of stock footage of launches by the space shuttle Columbia and an Apollo era Saturn V on the launch pad. Columbia makes three launches in twenty-four hours to help Starflight (something completely impossible given turnaround times for shuttle launches). The Saturn V shown at the Kennedy Space Center was depicted as carrying the communications satellite from a fictitious launch site near Sydney.

Each time Columbia lands, the touchdown footage is from the early shuttle days when they landed on the dirt runway at Edwards AFB, rather than the concrete runway that Thornwall would be expected to have. A chase plane is also visible. Also, each time it takes off, it has a white external fuel tank, rather than the unpainted version that became routine before Challenger joined the shuttle fleet.

Pete should have gotten the "bends" when he opened the Starflight hatch into the lower pressure of the airlock, since he was breathing a mixed atmosphere instead of pure oxygen at a lower pressure as the suit would furnish.

When Cody and Del brief the other crew on the Culver tank plan, only three others are visible, being mostly flight attendants. Yet, Cody refers to a crew of six, one of which is dead, so there must be a fourth flight attendant, as Cody, Del, Andrea, Amy, Joe Pedowski and another attendant remain aboard, Erica goes in the tank, and three, not two, others volunteer.