The Beast from the Belly of a Boeing

When a terrorist group with a vague ideology and an even more unclear goal hijack an airplane, who you gonna call? The government. Nah, they'll just bring unlimited resources and do it for free. What you need is a group of colorful mercenaries who operate out of a van and charge you a lot of money.

You don't go into an 80s action show expecting anything approaching reality, and that's okay, because quite frankly reality sucks. You want to see likeable good guys take on mustache twisting bad guys and ultimately prevail; all within the 50 minute mark. Once again, The A-Team delivers. The bulk of the credit for the relative success of this episode (and series in general) goes to the four leads; particularly Dwight Schultz. He brings %100 in every scene, and his "Howling Mad" Murdock is an absolute hoot.

The A-Team is called in to help out an airline when one of their planes is hijacked by a terrorist group. Hannibal and Face masquerade as airline executives to bargain for the release of hostages...

Excellent episode that would be a delight for aviation fans with different areas of the Boeing seen. But it's BA that is the star here, he finally ends up on the plane without being drugged. However, he gets shell shocked. Here his great chemistry with Murdock in his display. Hannibal is feeling the jazz and the Face is counting the money - a nail biting finale ends this highly enjoyable episode.

From an era when hijacking a plane was as simple as ABC.

The United People's Resistance, a terrorist group has hijacked a plane and demand a ransom. The airline executives call in The A Team. They somehow managed to get hold of them very fast.

Before you know it, Hannibal and Face pretend to be Beller executives and swap themselves for two hostages. Meanwhile Murdock and BA smuggle themselves inside the plane. Murdock is declared sane by his doctor in this episode and relesed from the hospital.

The hijackers plan to parachute out of the plane before ditching it into the sea.

In a sense this was halfway there to be a Die Hard type episode. The main villain is played by Andrew Robinson, memorable as the psycho in Dirty Harry. Xander Berkeley has an early role as an henchman.

It is also a very silly episode as you can sense the producers wanted to shake the formula up a bit. The hijackers ask for permission to take off. When it is refused they then threaten to shoot the passengers. Beller airlines appear to be a two men and a dog operation. To top it all, footage is used from Airplane the Movie.

Hannibal's disguise is so bad. The hijackers actually figure out he is not one of the Beller executives.

On the plane he is temporary blinded by powder burns from a gunshot. So someone else has to attempt to land the plane but the Beller executives plan to crash the plane into the sea!

Even then this is an enjoyably daft episode.

Ha ha. I ain't getting on no airplane. We'll see about that