Executive Decision

Lieutenant Colonel Austin Travis leads an unsuccessful Special Forces raid on a Chechen mafia safe house in Italy to recover a stolen Soviet nerve agent, DZ-5, during which one of the commandos is killed, and the nerve agent is found missing, leaving the mission a bust.

Three months later, Oceanic Airlines Flight 343, a Boeing 747-200, leaves Athens, Greece, bound for Washington, D.C., with over 400 passengers onboard including U.S. Senator Mavros. Nagi Hassan, lieutenant of the imprisoned terrorist leader El Sayed Jaffa, and his men hijack the flight, demanding Jaffa's release.

Dr. David Grant, a consultant for the U.S. Army's intelligence community, attends a black-tie ball but is interrupted and summoned to a meeting at the Pentagon to plan an operation to retake the plane. Grant disbelieves Hassan's demands, thinking he engineered Jaffa's capture and plans to use the plane to detonate a bomb loaded with the DZ-5 gas over U.S. airspace in a suicide mission. In the meantime, a suicide bomber detonates his explosive vest which destroys a London hotel. The Pentagon authorizes a mid-air transfer of an army special operations team onto the hijacked airliner using the experimental airplane "Remora F117x". Grant and DARPA engineer Dennis Cahill join Travis's team to intercept the plane.

The Remora docks with the 747, but the mid-air boarding is only partially successful due to turbulence; Sergeant Campbell "Cappy" Matheny is seriously injured in the tunnel with a skull fracture, and Grant boards the plane to assist. The 747 pulls up to escape the turbulence, putting too much stress on the Remora's boarding device. Travis sacrifices himself by closing the 747's hatch before it decompresses, causing him to fall to his death, while the stealth aircraft is torn off and crashes following the ejection of the pilot. The survivors—Grant, Cahill, Cappy, Captain Carlos "Rat" Lopez, Sergeant Louie Jung, and Michael Baker—only have half their gear and no communications equipment, leaving the Pentagon unaware of their survival. With limited options, the commandos conduct a covert search for the supposed bomb. Grant accidentally compromises himself to a flight attendant, Jean, but successfully recruits her despite Hassan's suspicions.

The team locates the bomb, and Cappy, despite his injuries, guides Cahill in disarming it. They believe the bomb is secured, but Cappy discovers that its arming device has an additional, remote-controlled trigger. U.S. officials release Jaffa in an attempt to resolve the situation, who calls Hassan from a private jet to tell him he is on his way to Algeria, but Hassan abruptly ends the call. Grant and the others realize Hassan's men are unaware of the bomb and Hassan's true intentions after he kills one of them for rebuking him. He also inadvertently reveals that one of the passengers is a sleeper terrorist agent and the trigger man for the bomb. Mavros is called to speak to the President of the United States, only to realize he is to be sacrificed as a warning that Hassan is serious, and is executed by Hassan. The soldiers use Morse code via the plane's taillights to signal escorting U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat jets that they are on board, requesting an extra ten minutes despite already crossing into U.S. airspace.

After Jean spots a man with an electronic device and informs Grant, the two enter the passenger cabin to take the suspected individual by surprise, but he turns out to be an innocent passenger with stolen diamonds. Grant then spots the real sleeper, Jean-Paul Demou, the bomb's creator, and gets into an intense brawl with him. Hassan attempts to fire at Grant, but is shot by an on-board federal air marshal who in turn is shot and wounded by a terrorist. The commandos storm the cabin as a firefight ensues. Grant struggles to wrestle the remote detonator (a Psion Series 3) from Demou's grip while Baker and Rat gun down several terrorists and Louie assists Grant by fatally gunning down Demou and eliminating the remaining terrorists. However Demou manages to arm the bomb before dying and stray bullets from a terrorist's weapon break the passenger windows causing explosive decompression, which blows three passengers and Demou's body out of the plane. The bomb is disarmed just in time by Cappy and Cahill as the plane regains stable flight at a lower altitude. In a last act of desperation, a wounded Hassan shoots Rat and then sprays the cockpit area with bullets (killing both pilots and damaging the controls in the hope the plane will crash) before being shot and killed by a severely wounded Rat.

Grant assumes control of the 747 and attempts to land it at Washington Dulles International Airport despite his limited piloting experience. He misses the approach, forcing him to go around for a second attempt, crossing into Maryland airspace as a result. Grant recognizes the area surrounding his training airfield, Frederick Field, and decides to land the 747 there. Grant makes a sloppy but safe landing into a sand berm at the runway's safety area with Jean's assistance, and the passengers are safely evacuated. Grant is saluted by the team for his leadership before being summoned by the Pentagon, where he invites Jean to accompany him.

• Official website
• Executive Decision at AllMovie
• Executive Decision at Box Office Mojo
• Executive Decision on IMDb
• Executive Decision at the TCM Movie Database
• Executive Decision at Rotten Tomatoes