In a modern riff on Hitchcock classic The Lady Vanishes, Robert Schwentke's Flightplan sees Jodie Foster lose her daughter on a commercial airliner. It was a much-anticipated thriller but ultimately "a bit of a bore" which got criticised for its implausible finale. Even so, it flew high at the worldwide box office, notching up around $90m and easily outperforming the similarly pitched Red Eye.

Lifting Off

In the five-part documentary In-Flight Movie, Schwentke explains that he was drawn to the script because it's "about a character who has to rebuild her psyche". For the same reason, Schwentke ditched a terrorist subplot, but it was producer Brian Grazer who came up with the idea of casting a woman to amp up the character's fragility. Jodie Foster was always first choice and we get to follow her around the set where she does a lot of running and grimacing. She gives credit to her nemesis, played by Peter Saarsgard, saying, "We both have the same approach which is not to pay attention to anything until the camera is rolling."

As well as pre-production and shooting, the documentary looks at the editing process, which proved tricky in parts. As editor Thom Noble points out, cutting a psychological thriller is one of the hardest jobs because certain moments need "stretching" for tension. He gives the example of Kyle's exchange with a therapist (Greta Scacchi) that requires long pauses for information to be drawn out. There are also notes on sound and visual effects that were crucial in recreating the experience of being on an aeroplane right down to the engine hum.

Gaining Altitude

Picking up on complex design issues is the 10-minute featurette Cabin Pressure. It explores all the nooks and crannies of the fictional Aalto jumbo jet, kitted out with all the mod cons from retractable walls to cameras mounted on ceiling rails for when the action really picks up. As well as dynamic staging, Schwentke explains how he tried to bring visual interest to this confined space using varied colour schemes and lighting set-ups. "It's cramped and claustrophobic," says pilot Sean Bean, "but that adds to the tension."

An Easter egg hidden on a seat in the main menu (lower left corner) retraces the route of Aalto E474, which is only marginally less entertaining than the usual slurry that passes for in-flight entertainment. More interesting is a second Easter egg concealed on the left-hand side of the documentary menu. Here, Schwentke reveals a run-in with the Department of Homeland Security after one of his runners left a classified edition of United Airlines' flight manual at the local copying store. D'oh!

The 'Making Of' documentary covers a lot of ground although the segments are brief and sometimes drift into pockets of hot air, eg Foster delivers that old cliché about a director who "really knows what he wants". Despite what she says, Schwentke doesn't give a commentary, but thankfully, plenty of behind-the-scenes footage and effects trivia keep this DVD from nose-diving into the banal.

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