United Airlines in popular culture

The use of United Airlines planes and advertisements in popular culture has been discussed in various contexts, including as examples of computer-driven imagery,

*In 1962's unfinished Something's Got to Give, A United Jet, probably a Boeing 707, is used for a scene shot over one of the islands of Hawaii. A scene involving the characters played by Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse returning to San Francisco, California from Honolulu, Hawaii where they'd had their Honeymoon, was shot in a recreated First Class cabin. Later, when Marilyn Monroe's character returns to her, Martin and Charisse's characters' home in San Francisco, after seven years lost at sea, she is seen carrying a United carry-on bag marked "United Hawaii".

* A United DC-8 is featured in the film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), starring Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy.

* In Sesame Street episodes 1090-1095 (December 23-30, 1977), the cast including Big Bird and stowaway, Snuffleupagus, traveled to Hawaii to visit Buffy Sainte-Marie. They boarded United Flight 5 at JFK to Honolulu. Big Bird had a hard time getting comfortable in the plane's cabin.

*In the film Beaches (1988), Bette Midler's character attempts to find a United flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco when she learns her friend, played by Barbara Hershey, is dying. At the United ticket counter, she learns there is fog in San Francisco, so she rents a car instead. Later in the film, Hershey and her film husband appear on a United flight from New York to San Francisco seated in First Class.

* In 1989's When Harry Met Sally, Harry and Sally meet for the second time on a United flight.

* In Sleepless in Seattle (1993) both Sam (Tom Hanks) and his son Jonah (Ross Malinger) fly from Seattle to New York on United.

* In Jerry Maguire (1996), Jerry (Tom Cruise) flies United Airlines back from a sports convention.

* Tom Hanks' character Viktor Navorski is stuck at New York's JFK airport in the United terminal in The Terminal (2004) . The film was actually filmed at an Montréal-Mirabel International Airport (YMX). An empty hangar which was transformed into the 'terminal' by Steven Spielberg's design crew was used for additional interiors. Viktor flew into JFK on a United 747, and the woman he falls for, played by Catherine Zeta Jones, is an international first class flight attendant for United.

* A Boeing 757 traveling from Newark, New Jersey to San Francisco, California on the morning of September 11, 2001, was the focus of 2006's United 93. The filmmakers, while not having the cooperation of United Airlines, recreated the morning with attention to detail. They told the story of the fourth plane hijacked by terrorists and how the passengers teamed up to overpower the aircraft's hijackers, subsequently causing the plane to crash in rural Pennsylvania.

* United was featured prominently in a number of episodes of Hawaii Five-O.

* In the U2 song "Zooropa", the lyric "Fly the friendly skies" is heard, a reference to United's 1960s advertising campaign.

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