Early in the film, Willis' character describes a terrorist's handgun to Dennis Franz as a "Glock 7" which is made in Germany. While the model could easily be made up for the movie (there's no real Glock 7, and even the mostly non-metal models are easily detected), Glocks are Austrian, not German. [Willis' character is a detective in the LAPD, he is not an international arms dealer or sales rep from Glock. He doesn't know the country of origin of every type of weapon on the planet. He may not even distinguish Austria from Germany.]

On the plane, Holly informs the air hostess that Dick Thornberg filed a restraining order against her. She then goes on to say that this is because she knocked two of his teeth out. In the first "Die Hard" film, Holly punches Dick in the nose, not the mouth. [Because of the camera angle, we can't see the location of impact of Holly's punch. The fact that Thornburg only holds his nose doesn't preclude the possibility that the injury might've been more extensive. Also, given Thornburg's reputation and character, it wouldn't have been beyond him to have been lying about knocked out teeth when he filed the restraining order. Holly didn't stick around to see the results, so from her perspective that might've been what happened.]

When McClane is about to attach the church he notes that the guard is walking over his own footsteps. But there are some cars between him and the church so he can't see the guard's feet. [He is just pointing out that the guard is walking back and forth, like he is guarding something or on an outlook, not that the guard literally is walking over his own footsteps.]

The only reason the terrorist's plot can work is that the airports around Dulles are all closed to landings because of the violent snowstorm. If there were no storm, the pilots of the airliners in the holding pattern would simply divert to nearby airports when they started running low on fuel. If they were able to do that, the whole plot would simply fall apart. How were the terrorists able to count on the storm happening on the very day General Esperanza's flight was due to land? They didn't have any influence over the date of his flight. How did they know the storm would be so bad that all airports would be closed - except Dulles? I don't think they had any way of predicting the weather quite that accurately. [They may have made a number of plans for different scenarios, and the storm occuring was just a coincidence for them. Another plan they may have had is to take the Air Traffic Controllers hostage (as they did) and have the other aircraft diverted for a supposed emergency.]

In the scene where McClain lights the trail of jet fuel, and the fire catches up with the wing of the airplane, for 11 seconds there are several shots of the wing explosion showing fire moving from the rear to the front, engulfing the bad guys. In the very next shot, there is a side view of an airplane exploding from the front to the rear. [Precisely. The flames engulf the "still intact" body of the plane from back to front, burning up the bad guys. Then the plane explodes from front to back. If the shot of the flames inside the "still intact" cabin was meant to be the same shot as the explosion, the cabin itself would not still be intact, but rather blown up as well.]

When the aircraft start landing at the end, they all come in one after another, and we see them all parked at the end of the runway, (we don't see any of them turn off the runway onto the taxiways). That would never happen with commercial passenger aircraft. What if one of them had skidded on the ice and slammed into the rest? One would not land until the runway ahead was clear. [It was a desperate time, all the planes where running on fumes and could have crashed at any moment. The main priority was to get them down, even if that meant taking some risks.]

In the beginning when the terrorists enter the baggage area they go in, in civilian attire with nary a blink from anyone. 1st off, I don't care how lax security is, someone would have noticed. In fact, when McClane approaches the door, a ramp worker is right beside it. Was he asleep a minute ago? 2nd, they seemed to open the door with no problem but when Bruce Willis tries, the door is locked. 3rd, why is there not a soul in the baggage area beside 3 men shooting guns? [Incorrect on most fronts. The door is in a quiet corner of the airport, it's quite possible that they would have gone unnoticed. When McClane approaches the door, a ramp worker is seen but he is busy with something and has his back to the door, so he would not have noticed the terrorists. Secondly, Cochrane uses a key to get in to the baggage area, so that would explain why it was locked afterwards. The third point is probably valid though, I would suggest re-submitting it on its own.]

When Willis is trapped in the plane by the terrorists he escapes by using the ejector seat - however the plane is a C-132 (at least the body of a C-123, with studio-designed wings) and these planes don't have ejector seats. [If it has studio designed wings, why can't it have studio designed ejector seats? It's a fictional aircraft, it just looks a bit like a C-123.]

At the start of the film when Bruce Willis is getting his car towed, he says says to the police officer 'Come on, cut me some slack, will you. Look, I used to be a cop in New York city. I only moved to LA because my wife took a job there. Come on, what do you say. Here we are, in Washington DC. The heart of democracy' it was meant to be Dallas International Airport in Texas? [Dallas is indeed in Texas. But Die Hard 2 is set in Washington Dulles International Airport, just like the signs on the building say, along with the actors.]

At the beginning of the fight scene on the 747 wing, the door swings opens as if on simple hinges like a screen door. Boeing uses plug doors, a design where the entire door has to move inwards several inches before moving outwards. [They actually used a real 747 when filming. I doubt they would waste their time to modifey the aircraft door to open incorrectly. It's more likely we don't see the enter door opening procedure and therefore it only looks like they just push the door out. (FYI. all doors on all pressurised aircraft must first open inwards. They are designed this way so cabin pressure will help seat the doors against the door seals and door franme, rather than risk cabin pressure blowing the door off.).]

Bruce Willis takes two torches out on the runway to try and save the plane that the terrorists are crashing on purpose. He is waving his arms back and forth in a fanning motion. When Dennis Franz and Fred Thompson see him from the tower, the orange lights that are supposed to be Willis are simply flashing on and off. [The lights look like they are only flashing on and off because Willis is so far away from the camera that his beacons are only visible when they cross above his head. He is, however, still waving them back and forth exactly as he was in the closer shot.]

Someone says the planes only have an hour. They could get to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Hartford, and maybe even Pittsburgh, Buffalo or Toronto - to name a few places. [One possible explanation for the fact that nothing got rerouted is because of the two storms. One storm already knocked out at least one airport, it is possible that between the two storms the other airports were shut down or at least operating at reduced capacity.]

A major plot element is that the terrorists have taken over the airport's radio system and that the hero's can't communicate with the planes overhead. The characters go to extraordinary (fatal) lengths to attempt to gain access to a radio that they can use to talk to the airplanes. The problem with this is that there are airplanes at airports. Every airplane has multiple radios that could communicate with other airplanes. All the vehicles that drive around the airport have radios. People carry handhelds. There are desktop units all over an airport. [The problem isn't the absence of radios. It's the terrorists' use of the airport frequency. Radio frequencies are assigned to given airports, and it is this that approaching aircraft would expect to use. Any attempt to use another radio at the airport (vehicle, aircraft, etc) would still have to be broadcast on the airport's frequency - even if they wanted to use a different frequency, they would have to get word out to the circling aircraft first.]

When the terrorists are about to take off, McClane, before falling off the wing, releases a fuel valve, yet Stuart does not notice. However, the General flying the plane does not notice either. Since the stream of fuel is considerably strong, wouldn't there be a warning indicator in the cockpit? [Not necessarily. It's not reasonable to assume that there would be sensors throughout the entire fuel system to detect leaks. Fuel levels are monitored by the guages, which would obviously indicate higher than normal fuel flow. However, when you consider how many thousands of gallons of fuel a 747 carries, an awful lot of fuel would have to leak out before the loss would be noticeable. For reference, and Air Transat Airbus developed a fuel leak at cruising altitude due to an improperly installed engine part (24 August 2001), but the crew was only alerted to the problem when the engines began to fail due to fuel starvation.]

Throughout the film the exceptionally poor visibility is repeatedly refered to. In the scene where McClane is trying to prevent the aircraft crashing by waving flaming torches in the air the Controller can recognise him from the Control Tower through a small set of binoculars despite the facts that 1) it is dark, 2) it is snowing, 3) they have only met once before and 4) McClane is wearing a borrowed Airport coat. Even from the end of the runway where McClane is standing at its closest point to the Tower this would be impossible. [Ok. The make-shift torches light up John as he is waving the torches about. You can see two small "lights" from the tower point of view. The guy uses a pair of binoculars to look at these small lights and makes it out to be John. There is poor visibility for planes to see the runways if they try to land. This is becuase the planes are a few thousand feet up in the air and it would be impossible for them to line up their approaches let alone land on a runway. At the end of the movie we see how is it possible to land the planes, they just needed a guide to where the runways were.]

when John, the airport police captain and his brother are in the car about to go to the hanger the car pulls out and hits the cab there is an external shot of the crash you see that the wind screen shatters but when the camera goes to the bonnet the wind screen is still intact. [It's not the windscreen shattering, it's snow from the roof of the car being shot forward onto the bonnet due to the crash impact.]

Bruce calls his wife and finds out that she should be landing soon. We then see the journalist from the first film making a huge fuss about being moved from first class, where he has been sitting for the entire journey. He hadn't been in Holly's compartment before due to his reaction when he first sees her. Why did they only just move him when the plane was about to land? He was sitting in first class the whole journey with no problem. Surely ten more minutes wouldn't hurt? [Holly IS in the first class, the left and the right rows have only 2 passanger seats, the middle one has 3. When the journalist goes to his assistant in the other compartment to ask him about the radio, it is clear that the side rows there have 3 seats and the middle one has 4.]

John Amos plays an Army Major, and says that he taught William Sadler's Colonel Stuart "everything he knows."  Well, this doesn't make any sense, especially if they are both from Special Forces units. Unless Stuart went through SF selection late in his career, he would not be getting instructed by someone two grades below him. [Colonel Stuart doesn't have to go through SF selection later in his career, he simply could have been promoted later on. Instructors don't advance in ranks very fast.]

At the end of the movie Bruce Willis ignites the aircraft fuel with a zippo lighter. Jt8 aviation spirit is essentially kerosene and is very difficult / almost impossible to light with a zippo lighter especially in cold weather as it is the fumes you are igniting. The fuel that was lit would have had to been somthing with a much lower flashpoint such as gasoline. [Zippos contain the flame when dropped so the temperature of the kerosine can be risen enough to start evaporating.]

The noise of the big English aircraft exploding should be heard far from the point of its explosion. But why didn't the waiting passengers in the hall hear it and panic? If it was too far, how McClane can arrive to Esperanza's aeroplane so quickly? [First, airport buildings are made extra soundproof. Besides, if the wind blows away from the airport and is strong (there is a snowstorm)it is possible to overhear the explosion. The people in the hall whould have felt the vibrations though.]