Since the start of commercial aviation, many airlines have arranged to have their planes displayed prominently in movies. This form of advertising is called product placement. Airlines hope that being displayed in movies will attract new business by increasing their mind share among their target market and by portraying a glamorous image.

This product placement provides an additional source of income for movie houses. If no airline has paid the producer's fees in order to feature in the movie, a producer will either use a fictional airline name, film aircraft landing or departing, possibly without revealing the plane's livery, or only use interior cabin or cockpit views. When an airline has paid to be shown, its name will be prominently shown during appropriate parts of the movie.
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{| class="toccolours" border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse"
!style="background:yellow;"| Airline
!style="background:silver;"| Films
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|Aeroflot || The Bourne Supremacy, Company Business, Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow, The Jackal, Birthday Girl, The Terminal
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|Aerolíneas Argentinas || Several of the films of Jorge Porcel
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|Aeroméxico || Las Caras de la Luna
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|Air Canada || Airport, French Kiss, The Terminal, Wait Until Dark
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|Air France || Airport '79: The Concorde, Company Business, Kiss of the Dragon, L'Auberge espagnole, Moonraker, Sabrina, Transporter 2
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|Air India || Numerous Bollywood movies, including most recently the film Swades
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|Air Malta || Koyaanisqatsi
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|Air Panama || In a film starring Venezuelan music group Los Chamos
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|Alaska Airlines || North
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|Alitalia || Only You
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|America West Airlines || Major League, When a Man Loves a Woman
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|American Airlines || High Crimes, Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Passport to Paris, Silent Running, Stuck on You, Fever Pitch, My Blue Heaven, The Associate, That Thing You Do!
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|American Eagle || Son in Law
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|American Trans Air || Die Hard 2: Die Harder
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|Braniff || Missing
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|British Airways || Bend It Like Beckham, Coming to America, Die Another Day, A Fish Called Wanda, GoldenEye, Mission: Impossible, The Parent Trap, Three Men and a Baby
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|British United Air Ferries || Goldfinger
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|Cathay Pacific || Tomorrow Never Dies
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|Cayman Airways || The Firm
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|Chalk's Ocean Airways || After the Sunset
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|Continental Airlines || JFK, Terms of Endearment, The Evening Star
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|Cubana de Aviación || The Godfather Part II
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|Delta Air Lines || Deception, Greenmail, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, D2: The Mighty Ducks
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|Eastern Air Lines || Mr. Mom, Almost Famous, Police Academy 5: Miami Beach, Una Aventura Llamada Menudo, Ernest Saves Christmas, Outrageous Fortune, Heartburn
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|Evergreen International || Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Terminal Velocity
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|Hawaiian Airlines || A Very Brady Sequel, You, Me, and Dupree, Addams Family Values
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|Horizon Air || Georgia, WarGames, Big Eden
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|Hughes Airwest || The Gauntlet, Black Girl
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|Iberia || The Pleasure Seekers
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|Lufthansa || The Lizzie McGuire Movie, XXX, EuroTrip, Diamonds Are Forever
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|Mexicana || The Mexican
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|Northwest Airlines || The Departed, The Firm, Deception, Fargo, Die Hard 2, Bridget Jones's Diary, North by Northwest, Random Hearts
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|Olympic Airways || For the Love of Benji, Summer of Love
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|Pan Am || Blade Runner, Bananas, Casino Royale , Catch Me If You Can, Dr. No, The Falcon and the Snowman, Freaked, From Russia with Love, Licence to Kill, Live and Let Die, Missing, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Hook
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|Panair do Brasil || La Peau Douce, L'Homme de Rio - Philippe de Broca
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|QANTAS || Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, Welcome to Woop Woop, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
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|Royal Air Maroc || The Living Daylights
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|Singapore Airlines || Black Ninja
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|Transbrasil || O Casamento de Louise
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|TWA || The Andromeda Strain, The Aviator, Back to the Beach, Catch Me If You Can, Daniel, Dumb and Dumber, Funny Face, Great Balls of Fire, High Anxiety, Jarhead, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Nine to Five, North by Northwest, The Out-of-Towners , Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Rocky III, Rocky IV, Salsa, The Seven Year Itch, The Wedding Banquet, The Woman In Red, Sunday in New York
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|Tower Air || Liar Liar
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|United Airlines || The Karate Kid, Part II, The Terminal, 13, Sleepless In Seattle, Good Morning, Vietnam, Prizzi's Honor, Rush Hour 2, The Facts of Life, Executive Suite
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|VARIG || The Boys from Brazil, El Tesoro de Atahualpa, Moonraker
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|Virgin Atlantic || Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Casino Royale , The Wedding Date, Wayne's World, The Wedding Date
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|Western Airlines || Commando, Fletch
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|WestJet || Snow Dogs
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|World Airways || The Real McCoy
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|}

Other Notes

If the film script requires an aircraft to crash, explode, or face some other airborne disaster, there is less likelihood that a real airline will want to be associated with it. A fictitious name, livery and airline call sign are commonly employed, such as the popular brand Oceanic Airlines. Airlines will rarely use a film which involves - or even mentions - an air crash as an in flight movie, or will edit it out. For instance, in the film Get Shorty a brief scene showing a plane crash was replaced with footage of a train crash.

In some cases however, some made for television movies will feature the actual airlines. Examples include The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story with TWA, Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232 with United, and Flight 90: Disaster on the Potomac with Air Florida. Other movies will change names, those examples include Miracle Landing (Paradise Airlines instead of Aloha Airlines) and Falling from the Sky: Flight 174 (Canadian World Airlines instead of Air Canada).

In cheaper films characters sometimes depart in one type of airliner and arrive in another, or to depart and arrive at the same airport, even though the script implies that they are travelling elsewhere. Low budget films sometimes exhibit a discontinuity between the aircraft seen and the soundtrack heard, as producers assume that all jets sound the same. A film can soon look dated if a real airline features prominently, because that airline may collapse, change its livery or merge with another. One notable example of this was 2001: A Space Odyssey which contained references to Pan Am spaceflights, although the actual Pan Am went bankrupt in the 1990s.

References to Pan Am also appeared in Blade Runner, which was released in 1982 but set in 2019, and the airline originally went bankrupt in 1991 (Pan Am is currently operating again, although on a much smaller route network than before).

See also

List of films featuring trains