The Twilight Zone (TV Series)

The Arrival (1961)

Noah Keen: Airline Executive Bengston

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Quotes 

• Airline Executive Bengston : This is Paul Malloy, our public relations man.

  Grant Sheckly : How much public, and what kind of relations are you poor guys going to have after this one? I got 22 years in this saddle and I've never been licked yet. Oh, some of them take a long time. Couple of tons of metal spread over 50 square miles of countryside. Sometimes, all it is is a misplaced air scoop or maybe a loose bolt in the elevator hinge or... once in a blue moon, a pilot with a psychosis. But it's always something. And that something always shows up.

• Airline Executive Bengston : Look, boys... we've have been theorizing for six solid hours. I'm just a simple-minded vice president in charge of operations, but I've got a passel of newsmen out there bugging me to death as to what kind of haunted operations we are running here.

  Paul Malloy : Tell them to keep their shirts on.

  Airline Executive Bengston : That's what you should be telling them or a reasonable facsimile of an explanation.

  Paul Malloy : Then you better get me another head and a couple of sets of arms, because I've been on that phone for six hours. I've had every news service, every television network, and a couple of professional mind readers trying to figure out what the great big mystery is we're supposed to be hiding in here. And you know how long I can keep it up, Mr. Bengston? Maybe another 15 minutes and then the whole thing is going to pop wide open and we're going to be stuck with rotten egg on our face. And Sheckly, and the government, are going to take our franchise away from us. Incompetence, mental instability, and and you name it, you can have it!

• Grant Sheckly : Have you checked out every one of the names on this passenger manifest?

  Airline Executive Bengston : No, I have not.That's all I need now is to have a small army of relatives from upstate New York clutching at my lapels, asking me for a definitive statement as to where their loved ones are who took Flight 107 out of Buffalo this morning.