The film’s central aviation disaster carries an uncomfortable resemblance to the crash of Turkish Airlines Flight 981, which occurred six years before the movie’s release. In the screenplay, a sabotaged device opens the Concorde’s cargo door in flight. The door is ripped away, explosive decompression tears through the fuselage, part of the floor is destroyed, and the pilots lose their primary flight controls while the aircraft plunges toward the ground. The fictional sequence is eventually resolved through an emergency landing on a prepared ski area in the Alps.
Turkish Airlines Flight 981 suffered a catastrophic explosive decompression and loss of control after its rear cargo door failed shortly after takeoff from Paris in 1974, killing all 346 people aboard. The source notes that the similarity may have been deliberate inspiration, coincidence, or simply the writers drawing on a highly publicized aviation nightmare; no definitive proof establishes the screenplay’s intent. The parallel is therefore best treated as a documented historical resemblance rather than evidence of a literal curse or plagiarism scandal.
