Flightplan (2005) - 11 questions

Question: Shouldn't the Arab man have been arrested for assault?

Answer: Not if the person who was assaulted refuses to press charges.

Question: What about the morgue director? Was he in on it with Carson?

Answer: Yes he was.

Question: I get how no one saw the child get on the plane. But how did no one see the kidnappers take her and put her under the plane, not even crew members?

Answer: Carson told Kyle that he put Julie inside a drink cart and used that to transport her to the lower area. Since one of the crew members was an accomplice, it's likely she helped move the cart.

Question: So no-one saw Jodie Foster bring her kid on the plane, I understand that. The plane was empty when the 2 of them boarded as they were the first to board. There wasn't anyone else on the plane and as soon as they got to their seats her little girl bent down on the floor to play with a toy, so I fully understand that no-one saw the girl. What I want to know, is how did the hijackers know she was going to be boarding first? Had she boarded much later with other passengers then SOMEONE would have seen the kid, and that would have totally foiled the plan. How could they have banked on her boarding first?

Answer: He didn't know for sure, but he had a hunch. As far as he could tell she would arrive early to register the body for the U.S. and they would let her board the plane first (as a common courtesy, since her husband died) Plus, he new that she had knowledge of planes and that it was her interest to see a new model of an aircraft that she helped build before it was to take off.

Question: In one of the last scenes, when Kyle and her daughter hide in a little compartment and survive the explosion, somebody who answered another question in this page said it was the hold of the plane, but I thought it was the black box when I saw it. So which one was it? And is it possible for a person to fit in the black box of a plane?

Answer: No, it's not possible. The 'black box' (which actually isn't black, but is instead brightly coloured to make it easier to find) is a data recorder, packed with all the attendent electronics required for that task; it's far too small for anybody to fit into.

Question: Spoiler: How did Kyle work out that Carson was the terrorist?

Answer: When the captain angrily described the terrorist plans to Kyle as he deboarded, she put that together with everything else that happened.

Question: Out of the hundreds of people on the plane, not a single passenger or flight crew saw Jodi Fosters character bring her daughter onto the plane? Was everyone supposed to be in on it? That would just be too weird and next to impossible.

Answer: Firstly the flight wasn't full. Secondly there were already several children on board. Thirdly, 2 people did see her bring the child on board, both the hijackers. Fourthly, Jodie and her daughter were the very first people on the plane, and greeted by the female hijacker. Then her daughter was seated until going to sleep. No one had a chance to see her. If a person is able to remember the face of every single passanger on a plane then they should be onstage with a memory act. On many flights I've been on, I couldn't even recall the people sitting around me, let alone the rest of the plane.

Question: Can someone please explain to me who those men were that Jodie Foster saw out of her daughter's window in the beginning of the movie if they were not the individuals on the flight?

Answer: It was the men seen early in the film who murdered Foster's husband. When her daughter disappeared on the plane, Foster suspected the Muslim passengers were the kidnappers, believing they looked similar to the men she saw when her husband died. However, they were never involved in the plot. Because Foster was under extreme duress and somewhat irrational, she jumped to a politically incorrect assumption based on their ethnicity.

Question: At the end of the movie, when they are at the tip of the plane, Jodi and her daughter slip into a tiny compartment, just as she activates the bomb. She and her daughter are safe, and the small space they were in must have been bomb-proof. Since that compartment is at a part of the plane that is rarely visited, how come a tiny place was made entirely bomb-proof? Or what was the space they climbed into and for what reason was it made?

Answer: The Hatch they climb into is the hold of the plane, i.e., the section with the coffin, the car, and all the other luggage in. It only appears small because of the way it is filmed. As Kyle would have known, it would have been extra strong and reinforced, as it was a break in two sections of the plane.

Question: Are the Arab men in the plane the same men Kyle saw through the window of her house in Berlin the night before? If so, is it a coincidence?

Answer: No, they are not the same. She was jumping to a politically incorrect assumption they were involved.

Question: Why did the villains kidnap Jodi Foster's daughter? The item they was smuggling was well hidden in the casket, and they could easily retrieve it after they landed. Nabbing the kid only drew attention to what they were doing. Can anyone explain this?

Answer: The bad guys needed Jodie Foster to open the casket (combination locked) to get to "the goods" (a bomb they needed in mid-air, not smuggled goods - it would be useless after landing). They concocted a plan to kidnap the daughter but make it look like the daughter never existed. This was the only way that the casket would be opened without reasonable suspicion on the bad guys.