As was a practice at Universal Pictures for a brief period during the mid 1970s, a television version of the movie was made with a lot more footage included. This was also done for Universal's Earthquake (1974) and Two-Minute Warning (1976).
This was the only "Airport" film that did not have a real-life disaster happen to an aircraft used in the filming. The 707 used in filming Airport (1970) crashed in Brazil in 1989 while flying for a cargo airline, killing the crew and a number of people on the ground. The Beachcraft Baron that played the one that collided with the 747 in Airport 1975 (1974) collided with another private prop plane mid-air in 1989. The Concorde used in The Concorde...Airport '79 (1979) crashed outside of Paris in 2000, killing all one hundred seven people on-board and four people on the ground, leading to the end of the Concorde program.
According to Carl Johnes in his 1979 book 'Crawford: The Last Years', Joan Crawford was approached to play the role of Emily Livingston, but declined, saying, "I wanted Joel McCrea to play opposite me, and anyway, they actually asked me to fly out there with only one week's notice. Why, that is hardly enough time for make-up tests or rehearsals, and when I asked about costume fittings, they said they wanted me to wear my own clothes."
When Jack Lemmon activates the radio beacon, the radio operator who hears the beacon is his real-life son, Christopher.
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