Items21The creator’s order
  1. 1Pan Am (2011)Pan Am (2011) 7.1/10 on IMDbFirst aired Sep 25, 2011The jet age at its most polished. Pan Am follows the pilots and stewardesses of the Clipper Majestic from 1963, when a transatlantic ticket still meant dressing up, and it treats the uniforms, the mandatory girdles and the cabin service as part of the story rather than set dressing. The CIA…0
  2. 2Wings (1990)Wings (1990) 7.3/10 on IMDbFirst aired Apr 19, 1990The comfort pick. Brothers Joe and Brian Hackett run Sandpiper Air, a one-plane airline out of a tiny two-airline airport on Nantucket, and most of the jokes come from the terminal rather than the sky: the counters, the rival operator and the regulars who see everyone's business. It comes from the…0
  3. 3The Flight Attendant (2020)The Flight Attendant (2020) 7.0/10 on IMDbFirst aired Nov 26, 2020Kaley Cuoco plays Cassie Bowden, a flight attendant who wakes up in a Bangkok hotel next to a dead passenger from her last flight and can't remember the night. It's a murder mystery, but the crew life is what gives it texture: layovers that blur together, colleagues who cover for each other and a…0
  4. 4Hijack (2023)Hijack (2023) 7.3/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jun 28, 2023Season one is the one for this list: a seven-hour flight from Dubai to London is hijacked, and the show plays out in close to real time across seven episodes. Idris Elba's negotiator works the cabin while air traffic control, counterterrorism police and the government scramble on the ground, which…0
  5. 5Red Eye (2024)Red Eye (2024) 7.1/10 on IMDbFirst aired Apr 21, 2024A British thriller built around one all-night flight from London to Beijing. Jing Lusi plays a Metropolitan Police officer escorting a surgeon, played by Richard Armitage, who is being extradited, and the bodies start piling up in the air while MI5 tries to keep up from the ground. Season one, six…0
  6. 6The Airport Chaplain (2026)The Airport Chaplain (2026)First aired Aug 26, 2026The newest arrival and the warmest. Hugo Weaving plays Tobias Wallace, a chaplain who treats Melbourne Airport as his parish and its daily crises as his business, until a new terminal manager, played by Shabana Azeez, decides he is a liability. It's the rare show about the terminal itself: lost…0
  7. 7Good Luck!! (2003)Good Luck!! (2003) 7.5/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jan 19, 2003The cockpit career drama in its purest form. Takuya Kimura plays Hajime Shinkai, a young All Nippon Airways pilot whose attitude gets him noticed for the wrong reasons as he works toward his captain's stripes, with scenes shot at the airline's Narita base. It was a phenomenon at home, averaging…0
  8. 8SkyMed (2022)SkyMed (2022) 6.4/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jul 10, 2022Air ambulance nurses and pilots flying out of remote northern Manitoba, where the patient is often hours from a hospital and the weather decides the plan. Creator Julie Puckrin drew on a sister who is a nurse and a brother-in-law who is a pilot, both of whom worked on air ambulances. It's a young…0
  9. 9The Flying Doctors (1986)The Flying Doctors (1986) 7.6/10 on IMDbFirst aired May 15, 1986The original air ambulance drama, built around the real Royal Flying Doctor Service and set in a fictional outback town where the plane is the only way a doctor arrives. It ran on Australia's Nine Network from 1986 to 1992, after a 1985 miniseries, and reached BBC One and broadcasters across…0
  10. 10Arctic Air (2012)Arctic Air (2012) 6.9/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jan 10, 2012A maverick family-run airline in Yellowknife, with Adam Beach as Bobby Martin, one of its three owners, alongside an old-school bush pilot and his daughter. The draw is the setting: a small carrier flying the far north, where the business and the family arguments are tangled together. CBC made…0