It's a 60-year old film that still resonates today

Cone of Silence (aka "Trouble in the Sky") (1960)
Starring: Michael Craig, Bernard Lee, Peter Cushing, Elizabeth Seal, Gordon Jackson, George Sanders, Noel Willman, Marne Maitland, and Andre Morell

Director: Charles Frend

Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

An aging pilot (Lee) is blamed for a near-crash with the latest passenger jet design, the Phoenix. While the designer of the jet (Willman) and a pilot-turned-airline-executive (Cushing) are pushing all the blame onto pilot error, a training pilot (Craig) starts to discover evidence that the problem may be with the aircraft design.

"Cone of Silence" is a nice little drama that revolves around the business and politics involved in running an airline and the processes by which mistakes and accidents are investigated, blame is assigned, and steps are taken to understand why the mistake or accident happened and how they can be prevented from occurring again. In the hands of less talented people, and with a cast that wasn't comprised entirely of top-notch actors--with even smaller roles being filled by the likes of Gordon Jackson, George Sanders, and Andre Morell--this could easily have turned into a preachy melodrama. Instead, we're treated to some nice performances by talented actors and a character-driven story that's made even more suspenseful by the fact that the audience knows there's going to another plane crash (or several) than just the one that got pinned on old Captain Gort (played with great charm by Bernard Lee) at the outset.

One interesting aspect of the film is that none of the major characters are ever acting out of malice--every character has blind spots/fatal flaws that contribute to the film's chain of events, but there isn't anyone who can truly be described as villains. Everyone is acting in a way that they believe forwards the greater good, and in the interest of truth and public safety. (There is one character who remains as apparently shady and misguided at the end of the film as he seemed at the beginning, but even he is more arrogant than outright bad.)

Further, with the plane crashes that have been dominating the news about the airline industry in recent years, this sixty year-old movie still has relevance today. I suspect that you'll find the exact same personalities in those same jobs, performing the same functions, today as you did back then... and I think that they'll behave in much the same fashion and be motivated by the same outlooks as those in "Cone of Silence."

If you have some time, you can watch "Cone of Silence" from this very post. I think you'll enjoy it. It's got fine performances from Elizabeth Seal, in her only starring role, as a dutiful daughter hoping that her father's name will be cleared; Michael Craig striking a nice balance between earnest and smarmy as a cocky pilot; and Peter Cushing as a "company man" trying to find a truth that is most beneficial to growing the bottom line. (It may be because I'm a huge fan of him, but I think that out of all the cast Cushing gave the most excellent of performances. He communicates more with a shift in body language, a darting of the eyes, or a slight change in tone than pages of dialog might reveal about a character. I don't recall ever seeing him give a bad performance, but he is particular excellent in this film.)