Deliberate mistake: The angle of the footage of the Air Force jet (from inside the 747's passengers' viewpoint) observing the 747's damage shows the Air Force jet would be flying away from the 747 instead of flying exactly parallel as the outside footage shows.
Airport 1975 (1974)
1 deliberate mistake - chronological order
Directed by: Jack Smight
Starring: Charlton Heston, George Kennedy, Karen Black, Efrem Zimbalist Jr.
Factual error: The 747 takes off from Washington D.C., while there's still some daylight, toward the west coast. Due to complications it's diverted to land in Salt Lake City. The Sun goes down and the plane is shown flying all night long. The Sun even comes back up before they get to Salt Lake. Really, how could it take that long for a jumbo jet to fly a measly couple of thousand miles?
Gloria Swanson: Oh. My jewel case. It's bomb proofed, the insurance people insisted upon it. Oh. My idea of heaven is never to have to pack or unpack. Why didn't I think of that before. Here. Here. You know what? The hell with the jewelry let's put my book in here. Thank you. Here you are my darlings, it's all yours - I never wanted to have the damn thing published when I was alive anyway.
Question: On approach to the airport, the crippled 747 is shown lining up with the runway. Meanwhile, there are cars going back and forth on a service road right at the end of the runway. Why wouldn't they have momentarily stopped the ground traffic on that road until the plane had made a safe landing?