Airport – The original airplane drama, mixing a bomb on board with an airport closed because of snow. Interesting from an historical point of view. Note the smoking passengers, and the flame-thrower’s based snow-clearing !

Airplane – The much funnier version of the same story, including an ex millitary pilot, and extremely funny airport staff. Try finding the DVD with the director’s comments, you’ll learn a lot.

Die Hard 2 – Bruce Willis saves the airport. One of the most technically inaccurate movies ever about airports. Terrorists able to take control of all technical systems from a single place to the sattelite-dish looking beacon able to transmitt to all planes, everything is simply not possible. The funnier part is when the vilain “gets the glide slope down” by turning a big knob ! I promise things are not that easy.

Flight Plan – An interesting story in which the plane has a serious role to play. However the size of the avionics compartment is simply unrealistic ! No plane ever will have so much unused space !

Falling from the sky: flight 174 – The true story of the “Gimly Glider”: a modern airliner that ran out of fuel because of a measurement units problem. Hopefully one of the pilots knew about a small and decommissioned airfield, “Gimly”, where they manage to land.

Air Force One – The US president saves his plane when vilain terrorists do hijack it. Not exactly a “chef-d’oeuvre” of realism. Hopefully, Mr. President can get in the avionics bay, take control from there, and so on. Not to mention the plane-to-plane in-flight passenger transfer.

Top Gun – Probably movie which motivated the larger number of new pilots ! Excellent in-flight footage, impressive combat and carrier landing sequences.

Feel free to add your own favorite airplanes movies in comments. If you can’t find any, have a look at this rather exhaustive list of aviation-related movies.