High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Airplane! (titled Flying High! in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan and the Philippines) is a 1980 American satirical comedy film directed and written by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker and released by Paramount Pictures. It stars Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty and features Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Lorna Patterson. The film is a spoof of the disaster film genre, and a close parody of the 1957 Paramount film Zero Hour!. The film is well-noted for its use of absurdist and fast-paced slapstick comedy, including a lot of visual and verbal puns and gags, as well as surrealist comedy.