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When Stephanie is about to check avionics, Fiona holds the flashlight by the lamp end (bulb) as Stephanie takes the flashlight. However, in the next shot, Fiona still holds the flashlight, but she now holds the other end as Stephanie takes the flashlight from her. See more...

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While he plays an airline captain, Sean Bean is an aviophobe and flies only when he finds it absolutely necessary. See more...

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Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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When Jodie Foster is banging on the captain's door, the "air marshal" grabs her from the back. When he does that, she is pressed against the door, with the peephole by her mouth. When he says, "Can I let you go," she says "Yes." The next shot, the peephole has moved by at least a few inches. [After watching the scene the peephole does not at all move. She's pressed against the door with the peephole at her mouth, then when she turns around the peep hole is still at her mouth height and is right near her head. No movement at all.]
Edit
Near the end when the plane lands, we see the front wheels touch down first instead of the rear wheels. Despite the landing gear being designed to handle this strain, a pilot would never land like that as it would more than likely result in a major incident. [Ideally the pilot will flare and land with the rear wheels first. However, this doesn't always happen for a variety of reasons. Pilot error is one reason. To say "a pilot would never land like that" is incorrect. ]
Edit Corrected by rswarrior
When Kyle is running down the aisle, she is taken down by the Arab gentlemen. When she hits the ground she has a bruise on her right cheek. Throughout he rest of the film the bruise is on her left cheek. [When looking at Kyle from an overhead view as she lies on the ground, it appears as if she has a bruise on the right side of her face. Her right is in fact our left, meaning that she was bruised on her left cheek as correctly portrayed throughout the movie.]
Edit
When Carson is going downstairs to Avionics to find Kyle, there is a shot of Carson's shoes going down when Kyle take Julia in his arms. The shoes are on the second and third steps. After that, Kyle opens the small gate and put Julia on the floor to watch Carson. Then there is another shot of Carson's shoes but he has just gone down one step of the stairs. Kyle spent enough time opening the gate to Carson to get further down. [Maybe he wants to go down the stairs slowly to possibly be quiet. Character decision.]
Edit Corrected by shortdanzr
The airplane featured in the movie is loosely based on the Airbus A380. [That ain't trivia. It's obvious that they took the basic idea from the A380, however the E474 is just another plane with 2 decks, the shape of the plane is also different. The cockpit of the E474 is located at a different place, etc.]
Edit Corrected by Ronnie Bischof
At the very beginning a French Agent wipes a significant amount of snow from a bench so Jodie Foster can sit. However, in the next shot, which shows Jodie and the bench from above there is no indication what-so-ever that any snow was indeed wiped. No extra accumulation or disturbance in the snow around the bench. [That isn't a French Agent but Kyle's husband David. Jodie Foster is only imagining that he really is there. (Later in the movie she says to the shrink that after the morgue she was walking arround the city together with her husband). So when David wipes off the snow from the bench that is only in her imagination. After the scene in the morgue when whe see Kyle standing alone in the park - back to reality - the snow on the bench should be there, as well we're only supposed to see her footsteps in the snow.]
Edit Corrected by Ronnie Bischof Time
The Airplane (Fictional Model) in the movie was called an A474. "A" is the designation for the Airbus Company which builds commercial airliners. 474 is the reverse of 747 which is a commercial model built by the Boeing Company. [The aircraft is model E-474. The airline company is named Aalto.]
Edit
After the Air Marshall pulls the gun hidden on his ankle on Jodi Foster he fires seven shots from a six-shooter pistol. He fires one shot while lying down, one to break the handcuffs, 2 shots while running after Foster, and three shots at the door while Foster is closing it. The pistol isn't big enough to be a 12-shot pistol, and if it was then he would not have changed out the clip with 5 live shots in it. [A revolver is a "six-shooter", a pistol has a clip. The clip size can vary, commonly holding 15 rounds. Also, it is not unusual at all to change a clip with rounds still left in it. In a firefight, a person is not counting rounds fired, instead is concentrating on trying to hit the target. As such, when there is a break in the action, you change the clip to be sure you have a loaded weapon when you want to shoot something or someone, so you don't HAVE to count the rounds fired.]
Edit
Near the end of the movie, the airliner's captain tells the main character that they've already begun descending to land in Goose Bay, Newfoundland, and he continues to mill around the cabin and talk to the flight attendants. It is a very complicated process to divert an airliner in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and perform an unplanned descent to an alternate destination. No airline captain would EVER leave the copilot alone in the cockpit while this was happening; both pilots would be needed to calculate the new course and go through the required checklists. If the captain needed to say anything to anyone in the cabin, he would announce it over the intercom or relay the information to a flight attendant. [Arguably true under normal circumstances as we know them today; however, this situation is decidedly abnormal. It is entirely plausible that a) as a new (and fictional) aircraft it has advanced capabilities that do not require the pilot to be in the cabin at this particular time and/or b) the pilot has determined that it is more important at the moment to handle the unusual situation in the cabin and he has a lot of faith in his co-pilot. Any of these might explain the deviation from what is currently standard procedure on existing aircraft.]
Edit
When the plane is about to land there is a lot of snow at the airport, but by the time it has landed, the snow is completely gone. [Needs to be more specific to be worthwhile, we mostly see the runway and surrounding areas which would of, course, be cleared of snow on a regular basis.]
Edit Corrected by tw_stuart
In order to complete the hijacker's plan, he tells that all flight crew should deboard as soon as they land in the Newfoundland airport. Only he (Carson) and the woman (Kyle) are to remain on board. Still, the flight attendant (Stephanie) with whom he is performing the plan remains on board. How could she stay on board without anyone from the crew finding it odd? [She took advantage of the large number of people to hide. Her colleagues may have noticed once they were off the plane but they couldn't do anything about and if everything had gone to plan she would be in a plane leaving the country.]
Edit Corrected by tw_stuart
Near the end of the film, while the airliner is approaching Goose Bay, a hijacker tells the plane's captain that they will specifically require a Gulfstream III to make their escape. When the airliner lands a short time later, lo and behold, there is a Gulfstream III sitting on the tarmac. How were the authorities able to immediately procure that exact type of long-range, high-dollar business jet at one of the most remotely located airports in North America? And if the hijackers wanted to make it appear that they were trying to escape to another country, why be so specific about what kind of airplane they want? Any one of a number of business jets, small airliners, or even Canadian military aircraft could make the trip. [That the hijackers chose this specific model is not a movie mistake, that they were able to find on at short notice is stretching credibility but is also not a mistake. Finding a specific model of aircraft at an airport is always a possibility.]
Edit Corrected by tw_stuart
When Jodie Foster's character is searching for her daughter, she comes across a car and pulls a crowbar out of nowhere, as if planes just have things like that lying around. She uses it to smash in the windshield of the car. [The object Jodie Foster's character uses to break the window is not a crowbar, it is just a large metal pole. It is possible that an object like this would be around in the cargo hold.]
Edit
What is the chance of anyone surviving after spending a couple of hours near the avionics of an aircraft travelling at some 13/15 thousand feet? Jodie's daughter, a child, is sleeping in a place where there should be irregular oxygen pressure and a really freezing temperature. And Jodie even goes searching for her in a t-shirt. [Surviving at 15,000 feet does not require any special equipment or pressurization. Pike's Peak in Colorado Springs is 14,990 feet high and people are up there in shirt sleeves all the time. Additionally airliners travel at altitudes abou 30 thousand feet, this one probably even higher. At such altitudes, the temperature drops to -60°C, temperatures that highly sensible avionic equipment couldn't handle. For that reason the avionic compartments are heated, they also have to be accesible by crewmembers during flight.]
Edit
It appears that entire kidnapping is dependant on Kyle and Julia moving to the back rows to lie down. Had they stayed in their seats Julia would have been next to the window and it would have been virtually impossible to move Julia without waking Kyle had she fallen asleep. It seems a little strange to have an entire plan based around the assumption that back rows would be free and that Kyle and Julia would move there. [They probably had a nuimber of schemes on how they would kidnap her once she was on the plane. Kyle and Julia moving to the rear seats may have provided an unexpected opportunity.]
Edit Corrected by raywest
The air marshal's plan has a big hole in it: he was counting on nobody remembering seeing the girl. Even though she was playing under the seats, which makes it conceivably possible that nobody saw her, the air marshal could not possibly have counted on this happening. This is obviously a plan-breaking flaw because all it would take is one person besides the mother who had seen her and Jodi Foster's story is corroborated. [It doesn't matter if that might have happened. Not a movie mistake, just bad planning.]
Edit Corrected by shortdanzr
Near the conclusion of the movie, Kyle runs into the cockpit of the airliner with the air marshal Carson in hot pursuit with a small backup handgun that was hidden in his pant leg. Kyle slams the cockpit door, Carson fires his gun at it, and the shots bounce off harmlessly. Wouldn't an air marshal know that airliner cockpits have bulletproof doors? Firing a small-caliber handgun at an armored door at close range would be pointless and could cause the bullets to ricochet back and hit him. Besides, Carson probably is not carrying extra ammunition for his handgun. Why waste the shots when he will surely be able to find Kyle again and have another chance to kill her? [This is a character mistake, not a movie mistake.]
Edit Corrected by Brian C Friesner
The whole concept of a kidnapper 'pretending' his victim didn't get on the plane in the first place is utterly laughable. Even if nobody saw her in her seat, why didn't they see her walking down the aisle to her seat, or waiting to board the plane, or in the boarding tunnel itself? Why isn't she listed on the passenger manifest, or on her mother's travel documents or airline ticket? [It is very possible that no one saw the girl. There were many distractions for example; the family with the children drew attention away from everyone else, also it was a new plane, never seen before, the people could've possibly been amazed of it. And they were also the first people on the plane, so no one could have seen them in the boarding tunnel. Plus the girl was playing in the corner of the seats immediately as people started to board to plane. And, the woman who checked the manifest was part of the scam, so she lied about her not being counted. The two "terrorists" obviously had all of this planned out, so they could have also made a false travel document/ticket.]
Edit Corrected by Sir William
There are so many people who would have seen Julia before she was taken. Only one of the stewardesses was in on the plot, so any of the others would have seen the child in the beginning. As well, any people within two or three rows of Row 26 would have seen the child. [Not necessarily. Even though they are the first to board the plane, Julia almost immediately begins playing on the floor (and almost under the seats) and would not be easily noticed by people walking by as they are boarding the plane.]
Edit Corrected by Steph_Jared