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In the end, Air Force One wound up looking a heck of a lot like Air Force One. There are the tapioca-colored seats and the fuzzy blankets sporting the presidential seal; the Executive Suite with twin beds for the First Couple; the digital clocks displaying three time zones. "From a pure entertainment point of view," says Petersen, "a movie that looks real gives you more chills than a movie that doesn't. And we're damn close to reality here."

Actually, that depends on whom you ask.

"A lot of what you see on screen is Hollywood fantasy," says Lieut. Col. Napoleon B. Byars, an Air Force spokesman. "They did a good job, but let's just say they didn't get everything right."

So how close did the movie come to reality? Here are the answers — along with some plot details that you may want to skip until after you've seen the movie.

IN THE MOVIE, FORD'S CAPTORS BELIEVE HE'S FLED THE PLANE BY WAY OF AN ESCAPE POD (HE ACTUALLY STAYS BEHIND TO FIGHT OFF HIS CAPTORS). DOES SUCH A POD REALLY EXIST IN THE PLANE'S UNDERBELLY? The official word is no. "There's nothing to it at all," says Byars. "It's purely a license Hollywood has taken."

That's not the way Petersen sees it. He claims to have received confirmation in recent weeks from "a very reliable source" that such a pod actually exists. "It just makes too much sense," he says. "And when we were touring the plane, the cargo hold was one area that was off-limits to us. I left thinking, There's a pod down there, there's a pod down there!"

Even if the pod is a fabrication, it wasn't invented for Air Force One. There's a precedent in 1981's Escape From New York, in which the President bails out of his plane over Manhattan. "I just assumed the public would buy it here, too," says scriptwriter Marlowe.

IS THE PLANE BULLETPROOF, MISSILE RESISTANT, AND ABLE TO WITHSTAND THE PULSE OF A NUCLEAR BLAST? AFO does have sophisticated electronic jamming devices to protect the plane against certain nuclear reactions, and it can make evasive maneuvers on autopilot, a countermeasure against in-air missile attacks. And Byars says the plane's shell is reinforced "inside and out from every perspective imaginable in a craft that also has to be airborne."

COULD THE PRESIDENT MAKE A CELL-PHONE CALL FROM THE CARGO AREA MID-FLIGHT? Air Force One has 87 phones, some of which connect calls to anyone anywhere on earth, in space, or even in ocean-deep nuclear submarines. But that cell-phone call Ford places to his Veep while trying to elude his captors would be impossible at 30,000 feet. "At that altitude, he'd simply be out of range," says Air Force first lieutenant Neil Nipper.

DOES AIR FORCE ONE REALLY GET LIVE CNN COVERAGE? Occasionally. Unlike most planes, the President's has 16 video monitors that can receive satellite feed, allowing for cable access in some locations. It also has 11 videocassette recorders.

ARE THERE HUGE CONFERENCE ROOMS ON THE PLANE? Though the movie's flying Oval Office and living quarters accurately reflect the look of the real plane, "the executive boardroom only seats eight," Byars says, "not the 50 or so in the movie."

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