The writers and directors of Airplane!, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker, discovered the film while watching it on TV and decided to write a plane-disaster film. They realized their draft wasn’t great, so they decided to write it using the exact plot to Zero Hour! But, to avoid legal issues, the filmmakers even bought the rights to Zero Hour! for a small fee, which allowed them to reuse its material freely. Funny enough, one of the co-writers of Zero Hour!, Arthur Hailey, wrote the 1968 novel Airport, which would later be made into the 1970 movie of the same name and kick off the disaster film genre, a genre that Airplane! would kill.
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