That missing plane

Amazingly, the various authorities in Southeast Asia have not been able to find that Malaysian plane which went missing from radar over the weekend. Or, at least, they claim not to have been able to find it; I've heard suggestion that various militaries might have been able to track it on radar longer than civil air traffic control could, but that would involve giving up military secrets. I also tend to think that if it had crashed into the ocean, parts of it would have washed up somewhere. But none of this is really relevant to a classic movie blog. Not being able to think of much else to write about today, I found myself wondering which old movie would be best suited to what is becoming a really strang story.

If the plane crash landed somewhere on terra firma and the authorities were looking for it, perhaps the closest movie might be the John Wayne version of Island in the Sky, although in that case the plane crashed in rather a colder place than where the Malaysian Airlines plane could have gone down.

A plane that goes down in a more tropical location is Five Came Back, although I shudder to think of the passengers on the Malaysian plane being subjected to the possibility of being eaten by cannibals.

The Flight of the Phoenix, in which James Stewart and company crash-land in the Arabian desert and try to rebuild the plane, is another one that would fit in well.

With stolen passports and suggestions of terrorism, perhaps the 1970 version of Airport could fit in here, with Helen Hayes having stolen a passport instead of being a stowaway, and Van Heflin bombing the plane.

More fancifally, perhaps some guy swallowed up the plane and took it back to his secret volcano hideaway. That would certainly explain the sudden disappearance from radar and the governments' inability to find anything. ;-)

I'd humorously suggest TCM preempt part of its programming to run such a marathon, but in addition to people finding it offensive, you'd have regular TCM viewers having a conniption fit over some movie they wanted to see being preembpted, as happened with the Shirley Temple tribute on Sunday.

If you've got any god airplane gone missing movies I missed -- and I'm sure there are dozens -- feel free to add them in the comments.