As the team lands the plane, there's a scene where it crashes through the airport window. The scene is actually from Airplane! (1980).
The ransom was paid in $1000 bills. Large bills (over $500) were no longer printed after 1945 and removed from general circulation in 1969. Five thousand of this denomination probably would have required a long time to acquire. What's more, any time they would try to exchange those bills at a bank would require filling out Treasury forms explaining how they acquired them. The money would be all but useless.
Stephen J. Cannell reused the "Beller Air" company from his earlier The Greatest American Hero.
This episode followed a standard theme present in many movies and TV shows from the 1970s and 1980s, where the pilots of an aircraft are incapacitated for one reason or another, and a passenger or passengers have to attempt to land the plane with the help of ground controllers.
The film Murdock references starring Doug McClure is a real movie from 1971.