Flightplan

Flightplan (2005)

25 answered questions since 11 Oct '17, 00:00

(22 votes)

Question: Several questions. 1. What was Carson's relationship to Stephanie? They obviously knew each other. 2. Why didn't Carson ask the morgue director for the code? It would have been much easier. 3. The plane is to escape, but would they really allow an air marshall to just stroll on the plane even if his plan was successful? And how would he get Stephanie on? 4. Was Carson enjoying himself with his convoluted plan? He wants $50 million, but there are so many easier ways to get that such as robbing a bank.

Answer: 1. They appeared to be lovers. 2. I would classify this as a plot hole. However, if he had done that, there would be no movie. This a literary device known as a "suspension of disbelief." That is, the audience just accepts that certain aspects of the plot are unrealistic so the story can be told. 3. It is highly unlikely Carson would be allowed to stroll onto the plane. It was not revealed how he intended to get Stephanie aboard, but he could not leave her behind. 4. There's no way of knowing if Carson was enjoying himself. Yes, he could rob a bank, but he has no experience doing that. He is utilizing his knowledge and expertise as an air marshal to execute a complicated plan that places him in the center of what is happening, giving him some control over how events unfold. Carson has created an atypical scenario and knows the police cannot respond as if it was an everyday bank robbery. Also, successful bank robberies typically result in a relatively small amount of money being stolen, not $50 million.

raywest

Why would there be no movie if Carson asked the morgue director for code?

Answer: Carson wanted to make Kyle the terrorist so that he could live peacefully even after debarked. His plan was to blow up the plane after evacuation. If he did that, there would be nothing left to prove him guilty. When Kyle asked him to get into the plane, he would have run towards FBI and blasted the plane. That would have been more ideal.

Answer: 2) the morgue director doesn't have the code as was explained at start of film 3) the G3 plane was never intended to be used. Carson was going to kill (shoot) Kyle and blow up her daughter. Therefore he wouldn't need to escape, as no-one knows he is bad.

2) It's never explained whether the morgue director has the code or not. It's only explained that Kyle has the code; Carson and Stephanie don't. Plus, given that he was the morgue director, he would have had the code too. When they said Kyle was the only one who had the code, they didn't necessarily mean that Kyle was the only person in the world who had the code, they meant she was the only person, besides the morgue director, who knew the code.

The morgue director does not have the code. Kyle is the only one in the world who knows the code. The morgue director had Kyle enter the code to say her final goodbyes. She leaves with the coffin still open. This is presumably when the morgue director plants the bombs.

2) Then how did he plant the explosives inside the casket?

Question: How did the morgue director put the explosives in the casket? I thought only Kyle knew the combination.

Answer: He would have planted the explosives into the casket before the body was put in it and when Kyle was not present. Being that he was the mortician, he would have access to the body and the casket to prepare it for transport back to the USA.

raywest

Are you saying since he was the morgue, he would have had the code as well as Kyle?

I believe Kyle also left the casket open after saying her final goodbyes. The morgue director could have planted the bombs and detonator at that time.

Question: Why would the airport not x-ray a casket? Did the morgue director order them not to?

Answer: Often times cargo, such as the casket, are sent by "known shippers" and it's the known shippers that were responsible for screening. So the airport would not x-ray cargo that was already deemed secured (i.e. safe).

Bishop73

Question: Why would Kyle assume that her daughter was hidden inside the casket? Only she knew the code.

Answer: I don't think Kyle was looking for Julia in the casket. The crew and air marshal were convincing her that she was delusional. They had also told Kyle that Julia died with her husband. I believe she was looking in the casket to see if it was Julia's casket instead.

Answer: Because after searching the entire plane for her daughter without finding her, it was the last place left she hadn't looked in. It was a desperate, last-ditch attempt to try anything to find her. By now, Kyle may have been suspecting that her daughter's disappearance was something more than a missing child on a plane.

raywest

Actually the last place she hadn't looked before the casket was the avionics room in the nose of the plane, which is where Julia was hidden. And to be honest, I have no idea why Kyle didn't assume her daughter was hidden there, and search there before the casket instead of near the end of the film especially knowing it didn't have a lock, unlike the casket.

No kidding. I mean how in the world did she miss that? She's an avionics engineer. She designed the darn plane.

Question: I realised a couple problems with Carson's plan. I understand that he murdered her husband by pushing him off the roof so he could hide the explosives in the casket, and that once Kyle and Julia boarded the plane and fell asleep, he could kidnap Julia, and Kyle would have a reason to open the casket. The first thing I don't understand is how did he get Kyle's husband to come onto the roof? What if a different person came onto the roof instead? Or what if multiple people came onto the roof? The second thing I don't understand is how did he know Kyle would decide to leave Germany and bury her husband's body in New York? What if she decided to store her husband's body somewhere and deal with it later? Or what if she decided to bury it in Germany instead?

Answer: Carson was a member of a conspiracy, not the sole person who planned and executed the entire plot. His cohorts, which included the funeral director, carried out the first phases by murdering Kyle's husband, then the mortician assisted Kyle in making the arrangement to transport the casket back to the USA. It is not important to the plot to show exactly how and by whom Kyle's husband was thrown off the roof. We only need to know that he was murdered as part of the plan. Kyle's specific travel arrangements would be relayed to Carson who could then get himself assigned as the air marshal on her flight so he could carry out the final stage of the plan.

raywest

I don't know that Kyle would have taken time to arrange for her husband to be transported back to USA especially since she would have been extremely busy helping design/build aircrafts. She's an avionics engineer after all.

Most people would take time off work to bury their loved ones or transport them for burial.

Plot hole: Gene's plot has far too many holes for it to have had any chance of working in real life. He somehow must get himself assigned to that particular flight (OK, maybe as a flight marshal he could persuade his superiors to assign him to it) - but also hope that the air stewardess Stephanie is also assigned to that flight - something he has no control over. He then needs to push Jodie Foster's husband off a building, hope the corpse is taken to the only morgue in the city with a crooked morgue director, hope the coffin is assigned to the flight he is on. On top of that, he needs to get explosives into a coffin, the combination of which he actually says he doesn't know. He also needs to hope no-one notices the child, the child doesn't make a noise while boarding, there are lots of spare seats on this inaugural flight, and that mother and daughter move to them.

swordfish

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Kyle: You get off the plane when I say you get off the plane.

Bunch Son

More quotes from Flightplan

Trivia: The role of Kyle was originally written for a male character, but when Jodie Foster expressed interest, the filmmakers felt she was strong enough to carry the part and cast her instead.

Macalou

More trivia for Flightplan

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.

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