As most know by now, Airplane starring Robert Hays and many veteran actor special guest stars is a remake of the fifties' disaster film Zero Hour, starring Dana Andrews as Ted Striker. Airplane was also a parody of the Airport franchise, especially Airport 1975 (which also featured Dana Andrews) down to exact situations, like the nun playing guitar to the sick girl.
As for The Crowded Sky... like Airplane would do, a lot of this film occurs in flashbacks, and many are built around romance and melodrama, much like Airplane's flashbacks concerning Robert Hays and Julie Hagert.
These were not the kind of "flashing flashbacks" that both Robert Hays and Dana Andrews suffered of the war, but entire stories played out after the camera does a closeup of each actor/actress having the flashback. And in this movie, unlike only the two leads having flashbacks, they occur to almost the entire main cast.
