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 the raid one of his team is killed, and the nerve agent is found to be 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 on board, including U.S. Senator Mavros, and Nagi Hassan, lieutenant of the imprisoned terrorist leader El Sayed Jaffa. Soon after take-off Hassan and his men hijack the flight, demanding Jaffa's release.

Dr. David Grant, a U.S. Army intelligence consultant, is summoned to a meeting at the Pentagon to plan an operation to retake the plane. Grant doubts Hassan's demands, suspecting he engineered Jaffa's capture, and intends to use the plane to detonate a bomb loaded with the DZ-5 in U.S. airspace.

The Pentagon authorizes a mid-air insertion 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 intercepts and docks with the 747 in mid-air. The boarding is only partially successful due to turbulence, injuring the team's bomb specialist. Grant boards the plane to assist just as the 747 pulls up, overstressing the Remora's docking tunnel. Travis sacrifices himself by closing the 747's hatch before it decompresses, killing him and destroying the Remora. The surviving team members have only 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 suspected DZ-5 bomb, with the aim of neutralising it before storming the cabin. Grant accidentally compromises himself to a flight attendant, Jean, but successfully recruits her to assist their search, 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 just before the remaining team begin their attack Cappy discovers that its arming device has an additional, remote-controlled trigger.

Jaffa, released by U.S officials in an attempt to resolve the situation, 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 agent and the trigger-man for the bomb.

Senator Mavros is called upon by Hassan to speak to the President of the United States, but is killed in a display of Hassan's ruthlessness.

Under time-pressure to avoid being shot down, 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 to neutralise the bomb and retake the plane, despite already crossing into U.S. airspace.

Jean spots a man with an electronic device and informs Grant, who enters the passenger cabin to take the suspected individual by surprise, but he turns out to be an innocent passenger. Grant then spots the real sleeper, Jean-Paul Demou, the bomb's creator, and engages him in an intense brawl. Hassan attempts to shoot Grant, but, is himself shot by an on-board federal air marshal.

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. Louie assists Grant by fatally shooting Demou and eliminating the remaining terrorists. Demou however, manages to arm the bomb before dying and stray bullets from a terrorist's weapon pierces a passenger window causing explosive decompression and killing three passengers. The bomb is disarmed just in time by Cappy and Cahill as the plane regains stable flight. In a final act of desperation, a wounded Hassan shoots Rat and then sprays the cockpit with bullets, killing the pilots, before being shot and killed by Rat.

Despite his limited flying experience, Grant assumes control of the plane and attempts a landing but misses the approach to Dulles International Airport, forcing him to go around. Crossing into Maryland airspace, Grant recognizes the area surrounding his training airfield, Frederick Field, and attempts to land the 747 there. With Jean's assistance, Grant makes a sloppy but safe landing onto a sand berm at the runway's safety area, and the passengers are safely evacuated. Grant is saluted by the team for his leadership before being summoned to the Pentagon.

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