The accident in the film was inspired by a real-life disaster, the crash of Alaska Airlines 261 on January 31, 2000. Some dialogue in the film closely resembles the CVR transcript. Like in the film, the pilots of Alaska 261 rolled the airplane to an inverted position to try to stabilize the flight. Unlike the film, however, this did not assist them in recovering the aircraft. The root cause of the crash was found to be inadequate maintenance of the airplane's stabilizer "jackscrew," which caused its threads to wear down excessively and eventually jam the jackscrew. While the pilots were trying to reach Los Angeles for an emergency landing, the threads were ripped out and the stabilizer moved to a position that forced the plane into its fatal dive.

The NTSB investigation portrayed in the movie includes recovered data from the Cockpit Voice Recorder. US law requires Cockpit Voice Recorders to include at least 30 minutes of audio data from both pilots and Air Traffic Control radio transmissions. Since the plane crashed in less than 30 minutes, the audio from the CVR should have included Evans and Margaret's conversation about Whip sleeping on the job. This would have raised serious questions about Whip's behavior aside from his alcohol and drug usage. However, nothing about this is mentioned at any point during the NTSB hearing.

Featured in The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Episode #21.22 (2012)