MovieChat Forums > Flightplan (2005) Discussion > 28 Major plot holes - please add others

28 Major plot holes - please add others


I know that there are already several threads here mentioning plot holes but there are, amazingly, people who still seem to think this is a good film and people complaining about said plot holes are missing the point.

It's true that there is many a good film with one or two holes in the plot, sometimes even gaping ones. But they always allow for the suspension of disbelief.

This turkey has the plot holes coming so thick and fast that even if you continually adjust your disbelief level you just cannot see the film making the slightest sense.

Here is a composite list of all the plot holes I noticed and a few that others have spotted. Please add any more that you know of.

1) Get husband onto roof of building

2) Push him off without anyone seeing

3) Know in advance exactly where the body will be taken

4) Risk involving the morgue director in the plan

5) Know which flight the coffin will travel on

6) Ensure marshal gets assigned to that flight

7) Ensure girlfriend gets assigned to that flight

8) Get explosives into a coffin for which you don't know the combination

9) Rely on a woman and child getting on board without anyone noticing the child.

10) Rely on the child not speaking to anyone, not making any noise, not asking for anything.

11) Rely on their being empty seats on the packed inaugural flight of a new aircraft type

12) Rely on the mother taking the child to lie on those seats

13) Rely on no one seeing the child's removal

14) Rely on no one noticing a man putting his hand into a sleeping woman's trousers

15) Rely on mother going ballistic rather than just calmly talking to people and making requests

16) Somehow manage to get the computerised check-in systems to 'forget' the girl

17) Rely on the mother not requesting the airport authorities check the inevitable CCTV footage

18) Rely on the corrupt stewardess being the one assigned to search the section with the kidnapped child

19) Rely on the captain/airline contacting the morgue (to ask what?) rather than the hospital or police and thus get the fake information

20) Rely on no one, immediately on hearing of the child's death, asking why her coffin is not on board

21) Rely on the mother escaping and opening a coffin that she believes is sealed when there are dozens upon dozens of other luggage containers in the hold

22) Rely on the authorities agreeing to the ransom without talking to the so-called terrorist

23) Rely on them actually transferring the money - how would an alleged terrorist have known if it had been transfered

24) Finding a way to get the money when the authorities knew exactly where it was

25) Rely on the exploding child leaving no trace with an amount of explosive so small it didn't even hurt two people who were no more than ten metres away when it went off. That would not happen.

26) Expect someone with no explosives training to know that the explosives present were of such low power that they would be safe no more than 10 metres away

27) Have corrupt stewerdess remain on plane (necessary to distract Kylie so that the marshal could free and arm himself). How would that have been explained later? Why would she even have remained?


Plus:

Kyle was a propulsion engineer. You know, those big things with the spinny insides that hang down from the wings on pylons. There is no way that would have given here any detailed knowledge of the aircraft internal layout, electrical systems or avionics.



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How do the terrorists know that this wife will not cremate the body or bury the body or cremains in Germany? Cremains are much cheaper to transport than a body. As mentioned, Newfoundland is under the jurisdiction of the RCMP. It is insulting to the viewer to assume that the viewer is so ignorant that this mistake is not noticed.

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30) Rely on them being the first to board the plane, so that basically, no flight attendant or passenger sees them coming in.



16) Somehow manage to get the computerised check-in systems to 'forget' the girl

-Did they?? I thought the sstewardess girfriend was the one getting those reports of no Julie ever checking in, so therefore her 'report' was made-up since she was in on the plan. Did they ever have papers to show proof of no Julie checking in, or didn't they just believe this stewardess without anyone else double-checking (another plot hole).
"Contempt loves the silence, it thrives in the dark" -Merchant

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[deleted]

When considering plot holes, don't you have to separate what was bad planning on the part of criminals vs. what actually couldn't happen? Many criminals are just flat-out stupid. So, if they try to pull off a hare-brained scheme to get $50 million, that isn't necessarily a plot hole, is it?

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They don't really rely on people not seeing the kid, either. People are so unwilling to get involved when something bad is happening to another person. "The flight crew says there was never a child, yeah, okay, it was someone else's kid I saw, or the kids in front of her that I noticed." Even when they do believe there was a kid, so few people are willing to stand up and say something. Over half of the people wouldn't notice anyways. I don't think many people are even aware of those sitting in front or behind them on planes, and I'm talking about small, crappy flights. Kids notice kids, though. And a kid that was sitting near Jodie tries telling the parents, their was a girl their, mommy! the parents just tell them to be quiet and don't talk to the crazy woman...


"I don't patronize bunny rabbits."

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"The flight crew says there was never a child, yeah, okay, it was someone else's kid I saw, or the kids in front of her that I noticed."


But how would the plotters know for sure that the flight crew would also miss the girl?

Every part of this plan hinged on NO ONE seeing the girl and that is impossible to do.

This entire film goes beyond the phrase "plot point" as at no point does the plot make any rational sense.

1. How did he steal the girls boarding pass from Jodie for example? Apperenlty it was in her pocket, but how did he even know where to look???

2. If the girl did die with her husband, then why is she not bringing TWO coffins back with her?



"What was that, an exhibition?"

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Except Pratt had asked the passengers about her daughter before the flight crew was ever involved, so actually, they weren't just told she was never there.

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I know this is a late response but what irritated me was how every room on the plane was heated, well lit and clean. Also, why didn't they rush the daughter to the hospital? Meh! This film was laughable!

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That bothered me, too! Even if she wasn't CLEARLY sedated, it's procedure for any victim to be checked out by medical personnel.

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What about the quickest hostage negotiation in history!? The pilot says the hijacker wants £Ms into a bank account. The reply is "yes thats fine- Its in your account now!"

The negotiators would want to speak to the hijacker before anything else happened including wire transfers etc...

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1) Get husband onto roof of building

Easily explainable he could have fallen off the roof just like was stated and his death most likely made the news especially if he was a foreigner.

2) Push him off without anyone seeing

Relates back to point no.1 victim of circumstance

3) Know in advance exactly where the body will be taken

Easily could have figured out that information especially if the body needed to be flown back to the USA

4) Risk involving the morgue director in the plan
Money talks

5) Know which flight the coffin will travel on

Same as no.3

6) Ensure marshal gets assigned to that flight

How many flights from Berlin to New York are there?

7) Ensure girlfriend gets assigned to that flight

Not really hard to imagine

8) Get explosives into a coffin for which you don't know the combination

Morgue director knows it and again money talks

9) Rely on a woman and child getting on board without anyone noticing the child.

Not inconceivable as they were the first ones on the plane and the child was lying down making it difficult to see her.

10) Rely on the child not speaking to anyone, not making any noise, not asking for anything.

She had fallen asleep before and secondly she just lost her father in a tragic accident do you really believe she would be bubbly and talking a lot?

11) Rely on their being empty seats on the packed inaugural flight of a new aircraft type

It wasn't a new aircraft type and yes not all international flights are sold out

12) Rely on the mother taking the child to lie on those seats

Been on a number of flights where people move to empty seats to sleep and stretch their legs out

13) Rely on no one seeing the child's removal

They were in the back of the plane it would be pretty easy to first sedate the child and then take her away

14) Rely on no one noticing a man putting his hand into a sleeping woman's trousers

Again back of the plane and she had stated she had sleeping pills


15) Rely on mother going ballistic rather than just calmly talking to people and making requests

Obviously you don't have kids, if your child is missing you're not going to be calm for very long.

16) Somehow manage to get the computerised check-in systems to 'forget' the girl

Didn't involved overriding it during the flight which is obvious why the stewardess was needed

17) Rely on the mother not requesting the airport authorities check the inevitable CCTV footage

How was she going to request airport to check the CCTV footage when it was the Captain who made call to the gate?

18) Rely on the corrupt stewardess being the one assigned to search the section with the kidnapped child

Every stewardess looked and was involved in the search

19) Rely on the captain/airline contacting the morgue (to ask what?) rather than the hospital or police and thus get the fake information

That didn't happen and the captain didn't call the morgue! Someone found the morgue information during the search that was obviously forged and included information about her daughter.

20) Rely on no one, immediately on hearing of the child's death, asking why her coffin is not on board

Cause how would anyone not know? Considering the fact it was in the cargo area it's not like people are viewing how many things are in the cargo area to begin with? Also, with the compartments the plane had it could have been easily out of sight.

21) Rely on the mother escaping and opening a coffin that she believes is sealed when there are dozens upon dozens of other luggage containers in the hold

She obviously knew the combination to it, not hard to fathom.

22) Rely on the authorities agreeing to the ransom without talking to the so-called terrorist

Truly the only point that makes sense that you made and that was also shown to the captain when the marshall claimed she didn't want to speak with anyone anymore.

23) Rely on them actually transferring the money - how would an alleged terrorist have known if it had been transferred

Well, the terrorist found out because the Captain told him that the money had been transferred and also took down the confirmation number

24) Finding a way to get the money when the authorities knew exactly where it was

Once a transfer is complete can't be cancelled and it's not like the authorities didn't know who was requesting the money to begin with

25) Rely on the exploding child leaving no trace with an amount of explosive so small it didn't even hurt two people who were no more than ten metres away when it went off. That would not happen.

Except when the aircraft was detonated the two were outside and sheltered from the explosion.

26) Expect someone with no explosives training to know that the explosives present were of such low power that they would be safe no more than 10 metres away

He had a number of explosives with a number of detonators and it's not like he could put heavy explosive in a coffin either.

27) Have corrupt stewerdess remain on plane (necessary to distract Kylie so that the marshal could free and arm himself). How would that have been explained later? Why would she even have remained?

She could have gone to the bathroom head counts aren't exactly a science on the flight or in the midst of the chaos didn't verify who was there and who wasn't.


Plus:

Kyle was a propulsion engineer. You know, those big things with the spinny insides that hang down from the wings on pylons. There is no way that would have given here any detailed knowledge of the aircraft internal layout, electrical systems or avionics.

So you're saying that a propulsion engineer has no other interests in airplanes. I'm pretty sure she has a good understanding of where everything on an airplane is and how it's supposed to work.

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You're totally missing the point. How could they know IN ADVANCE that she and the girl were on board early? That no one sees and remembers the child. That the girl lays down in another row. That the mother sleep. Their whole plan relies on so many variables it's ridiculous. It's like planing a bank heist by relying on the police being distracted by the landing of Marsians.

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You're missing the point Rocky. Everything you listed is after the fact. It's what DID happen.
The question is, how could the robbers count on these things happening for their plan to work?
Think of circumstantial evidence. One, two or three coincidences are believable, but 27 coincidences become beyond a reasonable doubt and you're going bye-bye as should whomever wrote this abomination.

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Great original post about the 28 plot holes and yet people have come up with yet more. No need to repeat what others have said here. I always thought this movie looked interesting and mysterious and I finally got around to watching it. While this film is visually interesting and well-acted, midway through the whole picture just falls apart with a preposterous plot which becomes almost comical. It is true you can explain away many of the plot holes. The problem is that there are so many of them that the entire picture is weighed down by them. I also found it somewhat hard to follow. I know many other films also have plot issues. But I can't remember a film where the plot was so convoluted that towards the end of the film I was trying to make some sense out of this impossible sequence of events, so much so that the ending was anti-climactic for me. I think it was a good premise, but the script was horrible. It's an insult to Hitchcock to even compare one of his great films to this bit of rubbish. The film may have gotten airborne, but it never did touch down.

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For me what was sad about it was that they didn't even really try to explain the plot holes, despite highlighting them- all the way through there was a sense of "how did on-one see the daughter?" and "how did he know where to get the boarding pass?" and so on. When these questions were never fully explained, and certainly didn't come together in a satisfying way, the whole movie felt like a mess.

For great film articles and production tips for filmmakers: http://dylanspicer.wordpress.com/

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Great post by the OP. I'm not sure how anyone is defending the glaring plot holes in this movie. I've seen alot of films and this was by far the worst in that aspect. They should have stuck with the science fiction theme if anything. This is worse than taking a paranormal approach. The movie went way downhill after the Marshall was identified as the terrorist.

Other unrealistic scenes in this film.

- Jodie Foster consistently being let free on the plane after 5+ incidents of extremely inappropriate behavior. She would have been pinned down, handcuffed behind her back indefinitely for the remainder of the flight after acting out once, twice at the VERY MOST, especially in the post 9/11 era.

- Why did the Air Marshall's girlfriend remain on the plane when literally everyone else was let off at the end? In addition, why was someone so ruthless who engaged in a scheme to murder innocent people, including a child, such a coward at the end? Her behavior certainly doesn't matchup with the psychological profile of a heartless sociopath who is risking going to prison for the rest of her life if the scheme doesn't go according to plan.

- Why did the ruthless Air Marshall keep the daughter alive to begin with? Wouldn't it be easier to drug the child and then suffocate her to death, as it would be MUCH easier to hide the body.

- At the very end, after the plane exploded Jodie Foster comes out with daughter. The police do nothing but stand there in awe. The police were under the impression that this women was a terrorist and threatened to blow up the plane. Then the plane blew up, with everyone assuming she was the individual who just blew up an airplane. If she came out with her daughter or alone, she would immediately have 1000 guns pointed in her face and ordered to lay face down on the ground for precautionary purposes.

This film was good for the first 30 minutes or so, but after that it was a big joke.

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I agree with the plot holes already mentioned in this comprehensive thread.

But I still enjoyed the movie - that's my definition of a guilty pleasure. I actually laughed when the oxygen masks dropped (and that's not supposed to be funny in a more realistic movie).

What the movie got right:

(1) Casting the likable and watchable Jodie Foster
(2) The time-tested movie formula - one protagonist against all odds and obstacles
(3) Very high stakes and sympathy/empathy factor - You wouldn't want to be in this same flight with Foster but you're not against her against the insensitive crew and the characterless passengers.
(4) Reliable thriller elements - claustrophobia, paranoia, conspiracy, everyone thinks you're crazy and no one believes you
(5) The red-herring casting of Sean Bean. Was he really a good guy here?
(6) Running time of 98 minutes







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It's an insult to Hitchcock to even compare one of his great films to this bit of rubbish. The film may have gotten airborne, but it never did touch down.


It did, too, touch down. It flopped over like a lead balloon, LOL. ;)

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