The 43 Best Airplane Movies of All Time, and the Real Aircraft You See on Screen

The best airplane movie ever made is Top Gun: Maverick (2022). It puts actors in the back seats of real Navy Super Hornets, and it earned about $1.5 billion doing it. The funniest is Airplane! (1980), and the best true story is Sully (2016).

Below are 43 airplane movies: a ranked top 10, then the rest sorted by what you are in the mood for. That means plane crash and survival films, hijack thrillers, war in the air, true stories, comedies, animated picks for kids, and horror.

Because this is an aviation site, every entry also names the aircraft you actually see on screen. Half the fun of Top Gun is knowing its enemy “MiG-28” is really an American Northrop F-5.

Rank	Movie	Year	Aircraft on screen
1	Top Gun: Maverick	2022	Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet
2	Airplane!	1980	Boeing 707
3	Sully	2016	Airbus A320
4	United 93	2006	Boeing 757
5	The Right Stuff	1983	Bell X-1
6	Dunkirk	2017	Supermarine Spitfire
7	Top Gun	1986	Grumman F-14A Tomcat
8	The Aviator	2004	Hughes XF-11, H-4 Hercules
9	Flight	2012	McDonnell Douglas MD-80 series
10	Society of the Snow	2023	Fairchild FH-227D

The best airplane movie for every mood

Short on time? Start with the pick for the kind of film you want, then work down the list.

If you want	Watch this	Then try
Plane crash and survival	Society of the Snow (2023)	Alive, Flight
Hijack thriller	Air Force One (1997)	Executive Decision, Con Air
War in the air	Dunkirk (2017)	Twelve O’Clock High, Battle of Britain
True story	Sully (2016)	United 93, The Aviator
Comedy	Airplane! (1980)	Hot Shots!
Animated or family	Porco Rosso (1992)	Planes
Something new	Send Help (2026)	Carry-On (2024)

The 10 best airplane movies of all time

1. Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

On screen: Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, P-51 Mustang. Director: Joseph Kosinski.

Tom Cruise returns as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, now a test pilot ordered back to Top Gun. His job is to train young graduates for a near-impossible strike mission, and one of them is the son of his late friend Goose.

The flying is real. Navy pilots flew single-seat F/A-18Es for the exterior shots, while the actors rode in the back of two-seat F/A-18F Super Hornets rigged with cameras they learned to run themselves. The crew shot more than 800 hours of aerial footage.

It grossed about $1.5 billion worldwide and was the top-grossing film released in 2022 in the U.S. and Canada. It earned six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and won Best Sound.

Paramount confirmed at CinemaCon in April 2026 that a third film is being scripted. As of September 2026, Top Gun 3 has no announced director or release date.

2. Airplane! (1980)

On screen: Boeing 707 in TWA colors. Directors: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker.

Ex-fighter pilot Ted Striker, who is afraid to fly, has to land an airliner after the fish dinner knocks out the crew. Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar play it completely straight, which is exactly why it works.

The plot is borrowed almost scene for scene from the 1957 disaster film Zero Hour!, and the filmmakers bought the remake rights for about $2,500 to stay on the right side of copyright law. It cost $3.5 million and grossed $171 million.

Watch the final takeoff closely: the airliner is played by a real TWA 707 and a scale model, but that last shot is footage of a Boeing 727. The Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry in 2010.

3. Sully (2016)

On screen: Airbus A320. Director: Clint Eastwood.

Tom Hanks plays Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River on January 15, 2009, after a bird strike knocked out both engines. All 155 people aboard survived.

Eastwood shot the film almost entirely with IMAX cameras. The ditching is a model of a crew working a problem calmly, and the drama comes from the investigation afterward.

4. United 93 (2006)

On screen: Boeing 757. Director: Paul Greengrass.

Greengrass recreates United Airlines Flight 93, the one hijacked plane on September 11, 2001, that did not reach its target, because its passengers fought back. The film runs in near real time from takeoff.

It cuts between the cabin and the air traffic controllers and military officers trying to understand the attacks. Several of those ground personnel play themselves, including Ben Sliney, the FAA’s National Operations Manager, who ordered all U.S. airspace shut down.

It was made with the cooperation of many passengers’ families and earned Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Film Editing.

5. The Right Stuff (1983)

On screen: Bell X-1, Lockheed NF-104A. Director: Philip Kaufman.

Adapted from Tom Wolfe’s book, it opens in 1947 at Muroc Army Air Field, where Chuck Yeager takes the rocket-powered Bell X-1 through the sound barrier. It then follows that test-pilot culture into the Mercury astronaut program.

It flopped, grossing about $21 million in the U.S. and Canada on a $27 million budget. It then won four of its eight Oscar nominations and a place in the National Film Registry.

One liberty to know about: the film makes Yeager’s X-1 and NF-104A flights look like spur-of-the-moment decisions. Both were actually planned parts of test programs.

6. Dunkirk (2017)

On screen: Supermarine Spitfire Mk IA and Mk VB, Hispano Buchón as a Messerschmitt Bf 109E. Director: Christopher Nolan.

Nolan tells the 1940 evacuation by land, sea and air. The air strand follows two RAF pilots covering the beaches with a fuel supply that limits them to about an hour of operation.

The fighters are real: two Spitfire Mk IAs, a Mk VB, and a Spanish-built Buchón painted as a Bf 109E. IMAX cameras were mounted on the aircraft with specially made lenses, and owner Dan Friedkin flew the Spitfire filmed landing on the beach.

It grossed about $530 million and won three Oscars, for sound editing, sound mixing and film editing.

7. Top Gun (1986)

On screen: Grumman F-14A Tomcat, Northrop F-5 as the fictional MiG-28. Director: Tony Scott.

Maverick and his radar intercept officer, Goose, win a place at the Navy Fighter Weapons School at NAS Miramar. Goose sits in the back seat running the radar; he is not a copilot.

The Navy supplied F-14s and crews from Carrier Air Wing 15, and the enemy “MiG-28” is an F-5. The film was the highest-grossing movie of 1986 worldwide, earning $177 million on a $15 million budget, and “Take My Breath Away” won the Oscar for Best Original Song.

8. The Aviator (2004)

On screen: Hughes XF-11 and H-4 Hercules, as flying scale models. Director: Martin Scorsese.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Howard Hughes from 1927 to 1947: directing the air-combat epic Hell’s Angels, running an airline, and crashing the XF-11 reconnaissance prototype into Beverly Hills in 1946.

Rather than rely on computer graphics alone, the production built flying scale models. The Spruce Goose model weighed 375 pounds (170 kg) with a 20-foot (6.1 m) wingspan, and the XF-11 weighed 750 pounds (340 kg).

It led the field with 11 Oscar nominations and won five, including Best Supporting Actress for Cate Blanchett.

9. Flight (2012)

On screen: McDonnell Douglas MD-80 series. Director: Robert Zemeckis.

Denzel Washington plays airline captain Whip Whitaker, who rolls his crippled jet upside down to stop a dive and crash-lands in a field. The maneuver saves 96 of the 102 people aboard, and then the toxicology report arrives.

The failure is loosely inspired by Alaska Airlines Flight 261 in 2000, an MD-83 whose poorly lubricated jackscrew failed. That crew also flew inverted in the final moments, and all 88 people aboard died.

Three decommissioned MD-80 series airframes stood in for the film’s jet. Washington was nominated for Best Actor.

10. Society of the Snow (2023)

On screen: Fairchild FH-227D. Director: J. A. Bayona.

In October 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in the Andes carrying 45 people, including a rugby team and their supporters. The survivors held out for 72 days, and 16 came home.

Bayona recorded more than 100 hours of interviews with every living survivor and filmed partly at the actual crash site. The Spanish-language film has been a Netflix original since January 2024, earned two Oscar nominations and won 12 Goya Awards, including Best Picture.

Plane crash and survival movies

Beyond Society of the Snow and Flight, these are the best movies about plane crashes. For the real accidents behind the genre, see our list of the worst airplane crashes in history.

11. Alive (1993)

Frank Marshall’s version of the same Andes crash, starring Ethan Hawke as Nando Parrado, who served as the film’s technical adviser. It was shot in British Columbia’s Purcell Mountains.

Watch it back to back with Society of the Snow. Marshall himself emailed Bayona to say how much he loved the newer film.

12. Cast Away (2000)

Tom Hanks plays a FedEx systems analyst stranded on a deserted island after his cargo plane goes down in the South Pacific. Robert Zemeckis directs, and the storm-and-crash sequence is still hard to watch.

Hanks won a Golden Globe and earned an Oscar nomination for the role.

13. The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

A Fairchild C-82 Packet crash-lands in the Sahara, and the survivors try to build a new aircraft from the wreckage. James Stewart stars, and Robert Aldrich directs.

It carries a real tragedy: stunt pilot Paul Mantz was killed on July 8, 1965, flying the Tallmantz Phoenix P-1 built for the film. It earned two Oscar nominations.

14. Plane (2023)

Gerard Butler plays an airline captain whose jet is crippled by a lightning strike over the South China Sea. He lands on a remote airstrip on Jolo island in the southern Philippines, straight into rebel territory.

Directed by Jean-François Richet, it grossed $74.5 million on a $25 million budget. If you want more like it, Renny Harlin’s Deep Water (2026) strands ditched passengers in the Pacific among circling sharks.

15. Send Help (2026)

Sam Raimi’s survival horror strands an overlooked employee (Rachel McAdams) and her awful boss (Dylan O’Brien) on a desert island after their plane goes down on a business trip.

Released in January 2026, it drew strong reviews and grossed $94 million on a $40 million budget. It is the newest numbered entry on this list.

Hijacking and in-flight thriller movies

16. Air Force One (1997)

Harrison Ford plays a president fighting terrorists who seize his aircraft, with Gary Oldman as their leader. Wolfgang Petersen directs.

For the exteriors, the producers rented a Boeing 747-100 from Kalitta Air and painted it in presidential colors. The real presidential jets are converted Boeing 747s, and our guide to who pilots Air Force One covers the crews who fly them.

It was the fifth highest-grossing film of 1997, earning $315.2 million worldwide.

17. Con Air (1997)

Nicolas Cage is a paroled ex-Army Ranger flying home on the “Jailbird,” a Fairchild C-123 Provider converted into a prison transport, when the convicts take over. John Malkovich and John Cusack co-star.

The Las Vegas Strip crash finale was filmed at the real Sands Hotel before its demolition on November 26, 1996. Simon West made his feature debut directing it.

18. Executive Decision (1996)

Terrorists seize a Boeing 747-200B, and a special operations team boards it in midair from an experimental docking aircraft called the Remora. Kurt Russell, Halle Berry and Steven Seagal star.

Its famous first-act twist, killing off Seagal’s character, prompted Roger Ebert to write that he “perked right up.”

19. Passenger 57 (1992)

Wesley Snipes plays security consultant John Cutter, the 57th passenger on a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar that is also carrying a captured terrorist. When the terrorist’s accomplices strike, Cutter has to take the plane back. Kevin Hooks directs.

20. Die Hard 2 (1990)

John McClane is waiting at Washington Dulles for his wife’s flight when terrorists take over the airport’s air traffic control system. Her plane and others circle overhead, burning fuel.

Renny Harlin directs, adapting Walter Wager’s 1987 novel 58 Minutes.

21. Red Eye (2005)

On an overnight flight from Dallas to Miami, a hotel manager (Rachel McAdams) discovers the charming stranger in the next seat (Cillian Murphy) needs her help with an assassination. Wes Craven keeps it tight and nasty.

22. Flightplan (2005)

Jodie Foster plays an aircraft engineer whose six-year-old daughter vanishes midflight on the new double-decker jet she helped design. Nobody on board remembers seeing the girl.

Robert Schwentke directs, and the film grossed more than $223 million worldwide.

23. Non-Stop (2014)

Liam Neeson is a federal air marshal on a New York to London flight who starts receiving texts: someone will die every 20 minutes unless $150 million is paid. Jaume Collet-Serra directs, with Julianne Moore co-starring.

24. Carry-On (2024)

Collet-Serra returns to the airport with Taron Egerton as a TSA officer at LAX, blackmailed by Jason Bateman into letting a nerve agent onto a Christmas Eve flight.

It earned more views in its opening week than any other film Netflix released in 2024. Despite the setting, every terminal and concourse scene was shot in a decommissioned terminal at New Orleans airport.

25. Snakes on a Plane (2006)

Samuel L. Jackson is an FBI agent escorting a witness from Hawaii to Los Angeles on a Boeing 747-400 when a crime boss releases a crate of venomous snakes. The title says everything.

It became an internet phenomenon before release, and New Line added five days of reshoots in response to fans. The online buzz did not translate into box office: it grossed $62 million worldwide.

War and military aviation movies

26. Wings (1927)

The first film ever to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, and the only fully silent film to do so. Two World War I pilots compete for the same woman, with a young Gary Cooper in a small role.

Director William Wellman was hired because he was the only Hollywood director at the time with World War I combat pilot experience. About 300 pilots took part in the filming, with Army Air Corps support.

27. Twelve O’Clock High (1949)

Gregory Peck plays a general brought in to rebuild a battered B-17 bomb group in England. The film became required viewing at the U.S. service academies as a study in leadership.

For the opening scene, stunt pilot Paul Mantz was paid $4,500 to belly-land a real B-17 Flying Fortress, then an unprecedented fee. It won two Oscars.

28. Battle of Britain (1969)

Guy Hamilton’s account of the 1940 air war over England assembled about 100 aircraft, a fleet nicknamed the 35th largest air force in the world. Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine and Christopher Plummer star.

The producers found 12 Spitfires that could be made flyable. For the Luftwaffe they used 32 CASA 2.111s, Spanish-built Heinkel He 111s, and 27 Hispano Buchóns standing in for Bf 109s.

29. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

Based on the book by Captain Ted Lawson, who on April 18, 1942, flew the Ruptured Duck, the seventh of 16 B-25 Mitchells to launch from the carrier USS Hornet in the Doolittle Raid. Van Johnson plays Lawson, and Spencer Tracy plays Doolittle.

The production used operational B-25C and B-25D bombers, closely resembling the raid’s B-25Bs, plus real wartime footage. It won the Oscar for Best Special Effects.

30. Memphis Belle (1990)

A B-17 crew flies its 25th and final mission over Germany. Five real B-17s were used in filming, out of the eight airworthy at the time.

Only the aircraft names are real; the crew and mission are fictional composites. The real Memphis Belle has been on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, since May 2018.

31. Red Tails (2012)

The story of the Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group in Italy, who move from worn-out P-40 Warhawks to bomber escort in red-tailed P-51 Mustangs. The characters are fictional but based on real pilots.

It was a George Lucas passion project conceived in 1988. To get their reactions right, the actors were flown in real P-51s at the Planes of Fame museum in Chino, California.

32. Devotion (2022)

Jonathan Majors plays Ensign Jesse Brown and Glen Powell, Hangman in Top Gun: Maverick, plays Tom Hudner. They fly F4U-4 Corsairs with Fighter Squadron 32 into the Korean War.

Critics liked it, but it grossed only $21.8 million against a $90 million budget, making it one of the most overlooked films here.

33. Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy follows a B-52 crew carrying out a rogue general’s nuclear strike order, while Peter Sellers, in three roles, tries to stop it.

The Pentagon would not cooperate, so the set designers rebuilt the B-52 cockpit by comparing a B-29’s cockpit with a single photograph of a B-52’s. It earned four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

Airplane movies based on true stories

Four of the top 10 are true stories: Sully, United 93, The Aviator and Society of the Snow. So are Alive, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and Devotion. These two round out the category.

34. The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)

James Stewart plays Charles Lindbergh in Billy Wilder’s account of the 33-hour solo flight from Roosevelt Field to Le Bourget, which ended on May 21, 1927.

Aerial scenes were filmed from a converted B-25 camera ship. A non-flying replica built for ground shots now hangs at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport.

35. Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Frank Abagnale Jr., who claimed to have posed as a Pan Am pilot as a teenager while forging millions in checks, with Tom Hanks as the FBI agent chasing him. Steven Spielberg directs.

Treat the “true” part carefully. Abagnale’s account has since been heavily disputed.

Airplane comedy movies

36. Hot Shots! (1991)

Jim Abrahams, co-director of Airplane!, turns the same approach on Top Gun, with Charlie Sheen as a troubled hotshot pilot and Lloyd Bridges back for more. A sequel, Hot Shots! Part Deux, followed in 1993.

37. Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965)

Ken Annakin’s comedy is set in 1910, around a fictional London to Paris air race with a £10,000 prize. The cast is an international all-star lineup, including Terry-Thomas and Gert Fröbe.

The pioneer aircraft are life-size, working replicas. Like the originals, they were so flimsy they were flown only before 10 a.m. or in the early evening, when the air was calmest.

38. The Terminal (2004)

Tom Hanks is a traveler stuck in a JFK terminal when a coup back home leaves his passport worthless. It is partly inspired by Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who lived in Terminal 1 at Paris Charles de Gaulle from 1988 to 2006.

No airport would host the shoot, so Spielberg had a full working terminal built inside a hangar at LA/Palmdale Regional Airport.

Animated airplane movies for kids and families

39. Porco Rosso (1992)

Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli classic follows a World War I Italian fighter ace, mysteriously turned into a pig, who hunts air pirates over the Adriatic in a red seaplane. It is pure joy for anyone who loves old seaplanes.

40. The Wind Rises (2013)

Miyazaki’s fictionalized life of Jiro Horikoshi, the engineer who designed the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature and was the highest-grossing Japanese film of 2013.

It is better suited to older kids and adults, and it drew criticism in South Korea, where some viewers saw the Zero as a symbol of Japanese military aggression.

41. Planes (2013)

A Disney spin-off of Cars, about Dusty Crophopper, a crop duster who wants to race around the world despite a fear of heights. Critics were cool on it, but it grossed $240 million, and Planes: Fire & Rescue followed in 2014.

Listen for Val Kilmer and Anthony Edwards, Iceman and Goose from Top Gun, voicing two F/A-18E Super Hornets.

Airplane horror movies

42. Final Destination (2000)

A student has a premonition that his class trip, a Boeing 747-200B flying from JFK to Paris, will explode after takeoff. He and a handful of others are removed from the plane before it leaves, and Death then comes looking for them.

The explosion was shot with a detailed 747 miniature about 10 feet (3 m) long. James Wong directs.

43. Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

Watch it for the final segment, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” directed by George Miller. John Lithgow plays a terrified passenger who sees a creature tearing at the wing in a thunderstorm.

It remakes the 1963 Twilight Zone episode starring William Shatner, which is worth finding too.

FAQ

What are the top 10 airplane movies?

Our top 10 airplane movies are Top Gun: Maverick (2022), Airplane! (1980), Sully (2016), United 93 (2006), The Right Stuff (1983), Dunkirk (2017), Top Gun (1986), The Aviator (2004), Flight (2012) and Society of the Snow (2023). They are ranked on how good they are as films and how much real flying they show.

Was there an Airplane 3 movie?

No. Airplane II: The Sequel (1982) announced an Airplane III in a post-credits message, but it was cancelled after the sequel disappointed at the box office, grossing $27.2 million on a $15 million budget.

How many movies are in the Airplane series?

Two: Airplane! (1980) and Airplane II: The Sequel (1982). The original writing and directing team of Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker had no involvement in the sequel.

What are the best airplane movies right now?

The best recent airplane movies are Top Gun: Maverick (2022), Society of the Snow (2023), Carry-On (2024) and Send Help (2026). Paramount confirmed in April 2026 that Top Gun 3 is being scripted, but as of September 2026 it has no director or release date.

What are the best plane crash movies?

The best plane crash movies are Society of the Snow (2023) and Alive (1993), both about the 1972 Andes crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, plus Flight (2012), Sully (2016), Cast Away (2000) and The Flight of the Phoenix (1965).

What are the best airplane hijacking movies?

The best hijacking movies are Air Force One (1997), Executive Decision (1996), Con Air (1997) and Passenger 57 (1992). United 93 (2006) is the essential true story, recreating the fourth hijacked flight of September 11, 2001, in near real time.

Which airplane movies are based on true stories?

Sully, United 93, The Aviator, Society of the Snow, Alive, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Devotion and The Spirit of St. Louis are all based on real events. Catch Me If You Can is based on Frank Abagnale’s own account, which has since been heavily disputed.

Did the actors really fly in Top Gun: Maverick?

The actors rode in the back seats of real two-seat F/A-18F Super Hornets while Navy pilots flew from the front seat. Tom Cruise put the cast through a three-month training program to handle the g-forces, and the actors operated the in-cockpit cameras themselves.

Is Airplane! a remake?

Airplane! is a parody that borrows the plot, main characters and some dialogue of the 1957 disaster film Zero Hour!. The filmmakers bought the remake rights for about $2,500 so they could use the material.

What airplane movies are on Netflix?

Society of the Snow (2023) and Carry-On (2024) are Netflix originals, so they stay on the service. Other airplane movies rotate on and off Netflix and other streamers from month to month, so check the app for current availability.