QA Note Regarding Spoilers
AThe following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.
QWhat was the hijackers' plan and why did they pick on Kyle and her daughter?
AThe hijackers' ambitious plan was to ransom the airplane by demanding 50 million dollars from the airline, all to be deposited in a certain bank account, while making it look like Kyle was the hijacker. They picked on Kyle because she was the engineer who designed the propulsion system and had working knowledge of the airplane's layout, which would give credence to the idea that she got into the avionics deck and planted the explosives that would blow up the plane at the end. They also needed a way to get the explosives on board so they killed Kyle's husband and, under the belief that airlines don't x-ray caskets, they bribed the morgue director to plant explosives under the lid of his casket which was being transported to the U.S. for burial. Because the casket was sealed with a security lock to which only Kyle had the combination, they kidnapped Julia and made Kyle look like a crazy lady so that, at some point, she would go back into the hold to open her husband's casket while searching for her daughter. They would then retrieve the detonator, plant the explosives, get Kyle arrested by the FBI, and blow up the airplane with Julia in it, so that there was no evidence that Julia ever was on the flight.
QIs this a remake of Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes"?
AIt is not acknowledged as such, but the similarities are undeniable. In The Lady Vanishes (1938), an elderly passenger vanishes from the train while the heroine is sleeping, and all the other passengers later deny that they even saw her. In Flightplan, the daughter disappears from the plane while the mother sleeps, and again all the passengers and crew deny she was ever there. But even more identical to both is the plot device by which the heroine realises she is right and that something sinister is happening. In both movies, the elderly lady and the daughter write something on a steamy window, and it is later seen by the respective heroines and thereby sets them on their path to solve the mystery once and for all.
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