Replays of the ground-to-air transmissions heard when the investigators listen to the tapes, and later during the flight to simulate the crash conditions, do not accurately replay what was originally heard, with sudden pauses or missing portions of transmissions in each scene.
The aircraft used for this movie - cobbled together from a Douglas propeller airliner - would be impossibly tail heavy with tail-mounted engines. The wings are too far forward. If it managed to achieve flight, it would instantly stall and crash.
When they start up the left crash engine in the warehouse, no one is wearing ear protection. This could cause permanent or at least temporary deafness.
The cockpit of the airliner that crashes at the start of the movie has a brightly illuminated cockpit interior, which would make it almost impossible for the crew to see outside the aircraft. This mistake is repeated when the re-enactment of the accident is performed. In addition, when the crash airliner's engines failed, all lights on the aircraft would have been disabled, darkening the cockpit.
When Capt. McBane (Glenn Ford) is in his flight jacket, his captain bars are replaced with a lieutenant's single bar.
In the flashback to the World War II China-Burma-India (CBI) theater of operations, Glenn Ford is wearing a uniform shirt with incorrect arm patches. He is shown with the CBI patch on his left arm and the Army Air Force winged star on the right. The patches should be switched so that the Army Air Force winged star is on his left arm. The other characters in the CBI flashback seem to have their patches correct.
While Al Robbins and Ben Sawyer are walking around the tail of the aircraft to be used for the recreation of the fatal flight, you can see an "inspection door" on the left side of the starboard engine. You can also see clear daylight through the crack around the edge of the door where there should be a jet engine. This shows the engine nacelle is actually an empty shell.
During the flashbacks to World War II, all the aircraft are marked with incorrect fuselage and wing national aircraft insignia. The large white bars on either side of the stars have smaller bars that divide the white into two sections. If the movie had been filmed in color, the smaller bars would have been red. The smaller red bar were not added to the national aircraft insignia until 14 January 1947, nearly one and a half years after the end of World War II.
When the plane crash at the beginning of the movie is shown, the cockpit of the plane tumbles dramatically towards the viewer. However, when the crash investigation team is looking at the wreckage, the captain's paper coffee cup remains on the console where it was before the crash.
When recreating the fatal flight, the exact weight of passengers, crew and freight are duplicated down to the last ounce, including their location on the aircraft. However, when Martha Webster (Suzanne Pleshette) comes on board unexpectedly at the last minute, the sandbag that would have represented her weight on the original flight is not removed.