Question: Why did Kyle want to sit in the courtyard with her husband at the beginning? She looked quite serious. What is the significance?
Answer: There's no explanation, but there seems to be some sort of tension or discord going on between them that may be putting some strain on their marriage. They may have wanted a more private place to discuss something where they knew their daughter could not overhear. They also acted this way when they're in the subway station, communicating that all is not right between them.
Question: I understand the 2 men staring into the window in the beginning were not the same as the Arab men on the plane, but they were actual spies working for the hijacker right? I still think that was very suspicious and not a coincidence that people were spying on them the day before the incident.
Answer: Considering as they appear as the same actors who played the Arab men on the plane, this may have been done as unreliable narration for the audience (she is actually seeing the two men differently than what we are shown) to cast them as red herrings. Also, considering she was under enough stress to imagine her dead husband several times, it is entirely possible that she was being paranoid and imagining the two men in her mind, when there was really no-one in front of the window staring at her apartment. Either way, it's only a plot device to create a red herring later in the film.
Question: Surely military people and special needs people would have gone first before her and her daughter? If that's the case there's no way no-one would have seen the daughter. Or are there different policies in Berlin?
Answer: It's unlikely it's different in Berlin, and it would be an airline policy, not a government one. The fact that no-one else was on the plane when Kyle boarded with her daughter or was not seen by one of the flight crew is simply an implausible plot device. This would never happen that way in real life.
Question: When Kyle defeats Stephanie by punching her and Carson realises he has been fooled and tries to come down, he falls and gets up injured. Did he accidentally shoot his leg when falling or break his ankle or something? After realizing that Stephanie escaped the plane, he walks but uses his arms as well. How was he injured?
Answer: He sprained his leg.
Question: How did the hijackers know who Kyle was in the first place? Kyle doesn't appear to have known them prior to meeting them on the plane so how did they know Kyle was an engineer and that David was her husband and that Julia was her daughter prior to killing her husband?
Answer: Carson was not the sole person who engineered the plot. There were others involved, and Carson would have been given the necessary information about Kyle in order to carry out his part of the plan.
Who would have given Carson the necessary information about Kyle? The only people involved in the plot besides Carson were Stephanie and the morgue director. Kyle doesn't appear to have known either Carson or Stephanie, and the only time she met the morgue director was at the beginning of the movie. So, where would Stephanie and the morgue director have gotten the information about Kyle?
Is it possible the hijackers tricked a coworker of Kyle's into giving them the information about Kyle and her family?
I thought he got the information about Kyle by hacking into files containing information about avionics engineers and their families.
Answer: There may be many unidentified others involved in the larger conspiracy - some individual or individuals killed Kyle's husband, possibly the coroner and/or police involved in the investigation into his death, airport security (why no cameras were referenced), and someone with access to the passenger manifest. There may be an insider who knew about Kyle's role as an engineer and pulled up info regarding her family, all to further the plot of framing her and unbalancing her. It's a massive plot hole.
Question: How did Carson convince the captain Kyle was a hijacker without showing any evidence of Kyle being a hijacker?
Answer: Basically, Carson used his role as an air marshal to mislead everyone. In matters of security, the captain would assume the marshal was the expert and he would follow his recommendations.
Well a plot hole says just Carson is an Air Marshal does not mean the captain would trust him. The captain would know Air Marshals break the law too.
The captain had no reason to distrust him. He's busy flying the plane and Carson is acting exactly the way an air marshal would.
You would have to read the entire plot hole.
The captain has no reason at all to distrust an air marshal at that point. First of all, he was suspicious of her from the beginning and was angry for disrupting the flight which was the whole point of removing all evidence of the daughter, which was also the point have the morgue director sending a fake certificate that Julia died. They were going to use the "daughter's disappearance" as a credible excuse for "Kyle" to enter the hold and retrieve the explosives. The real plot hole is not that Carson has no evidence of as a hijacker, but why the airline accepts the "hijacker's" request to wire the money without talking to them or having a background identity.
Question: At the very beginning of the movie, Kyle sits on the bench alone in the empty subway station. She looks very shocked or frightened. Why is that? Because at that time, her husband David is not dead. He walks up to Kyle and they get on the yellow subway train home.
Answer: I believe he isn't really there. She's on her own on the way to the morgue but she's too scared to do it; that's why she's upset and why she takes long time to get on the train but he appears in her head to give her the courage to get up and get on the train to the morgue. It's done to set the scene.
Answer: He's not really there. On the plane, she tells the psychologist that she saw him, but that was her mind coping with his death. She imagines him helping her onto the train, walking home with her, sitting in the courtyard, but you can see there's only 1 set of footprints.
Question: How come Julia wasn't listed on the flight manifest?
Answer: It is never explained. Stephanie, the flight attendant who was in on the conspiracy, claimed that only Kyle's name was on the manifest and the seat next to her was unoccupied. Whether she somehow manipulated the manifest or someone else in on the plot was able to remove Julia's name, is unknown.
There is probably no way she could have manipulated the flight manifest since you can't access it from on board a plane.
Question: Why did Kyle Pratt kill Carson, instead of sparing his life, running to either the cargo door or passenger door, showing the people her daughter, telling them he was the hijacker? He appears to have injured his leg after he fell down in the restroom, He was further away from both of the doors than Kyle, And she probably would gotten to one of them before him, because he wouldn't have been able to move fast enough to get to either of the doors before her. And then he would have gotten arrested, because then the people would have realised that he had deceived them. And his charismatic and manipulative skills would no longer have helped him.
Answer: Because even if she had managed to convince people he was the hijacker, and get him arrested, there would have been risks that he would escape from jail, and try to get revenge on her for ruining his plan.
Answer: There's something satisfying with seeing a villain undone by his own devices, so after Kyle finds out that Carson was behind everything and willing to kill her and her daughter, Kyle is eliminating his threat while getting revenge, thus providing an explosive end to him that might satisfy the moviegoers desire for his utter defeat.
Question: Where did the hijackers hide Julia?
Answer: They hid her in the avionics section. Stephanie would have made sure that she "searched" that section since she is one of the hijackers.
Which part of the avionics section? The nose of the plane?
The avionics section can be much larger than the nose of the plane. On a 747 for example, it's "1.7 metres tall, and about 60cms wide, but goes the full width of the plane." A photo is here, and you could easily stash a child in it. Http://www.billzilla.org/aviationpage3.html.
Actually if you look at the shape of the interior where they hid Julia you can tell that it's the nose of the plane, and it would have been far too full with all kinds of equipment to put a child inside.
OK, well there's already a mistake mentioning that, so there's your answer. In the plot they hide her in the nose, but in the real world that's impossible.
Question: What was the point of getting two FBI agents on the plane if Carson needed the plane cleared to kill Kyle and Julia? Or was that something he was lying about? If so, why did he proceed to get off the plane?
Answer: Carson would not have any authority to prevent the F.B.I. from boarding the plane, and it would be highly suspicious if he in anyway tried to interfere with their investigation. He needed to act as if he was following normal procedures, otherwise his part in the plot would have immediately been exposed.
Question: Why would Carson have the morgue director send a fake certificate that claimed Julia has died if his goal was to get Kyle in the hold so she can unlock the casket? Wouldn't that interfere with doing so?
Answer: The goal was to make it look like Kyle was so unhinged that she was imagining that her daughter had not died. The fake certificate was to convince the captain that Kyle must be hallucinating. Carson knew that Kyle would not be fooled and would continue to search for her daughter on the plane, eventually looking inside the casket.
Question: How did Carson know Kyle had worked out he was a terrorist near the end of the movie?
Answer: At the end, when Kyle is speaking to the captain just before he disembarks the plane, she then realises that everyone believes she is the terrorist. She works out that Carson is the likely person behind the scheme and had been manipulating everything happening during the flight. When Kyle starts pretending to the captain that she is the terrorist in order to get what she wants (to find her daughter), Carson then realises that she likely now knows that he is in on the plot.
Chosen answer: He's not really there. On the plane, she tells the psychologist that she saw him, but that was her mind coping with his death. She imagines him helping her onto the train, walking home with her, sitting in the courtyard, but you can see there's only 1 set of footprints.