The Luton writer behind the original Airplane!

The Luton writer behind the original Airplane!4 days agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GooglePaul HayesAA Film Archive/Alamy/ParamountThe hit comedy film Airplane!, released in 1980, tells the story of a flight on which both pilots fall ill and a passenger has to take the controlsA director of one of the world's most famous comedy films has praised the writer of the original TV version on the 70th anniversary of its first broadcast.The spoof disaster movie Airplane!, starring Leslie Nielsen, has been widely acclaimed since its release in 1980.But the initial version, Flight into Danger, was written as a live drama for Canadian television in 1956 by Arthur Hailey – a then-unknown writer from Luton.David Zucker, the co-writer and co-director of Airplane!, told a BBC Sounds documentary that Hailey was "a very, very skilled craftsman" who had "thought of this great story" which Zucker and his colleagues had been able to parody.Getty ImagesWriter Arthur Hailey, pictured in 1959, was born and raised in Luton. He emigrated to Canada in the late 1940sHailey was born in Luton in 1920 and grew up in the town. During World War Two he served as a reconnaissance pilot in the Royal Air Force, then in the late 1940s emigrated to Canada.Keen to become a writer but unable to make a breakthrough, Hailey instead worked as the editor of a trucking industry magazine.While a passenger on a flight across Canada in late 1955, he wondered what would happen if both pilots were incapacitated and he had to try and land the big four-engined plane. He had not flown for a decade, and then only in smaller aircraft."I daydreamed a story," Hailey remembered on Desert Island Discs in 1986. "It's like a fairytale, and still seems that way. Everything changed."He turned the idea into his play Flight into Danger, which he successfully sold to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).It tells the story of an airline flight on which there is a choice of s...