It's the off-season at the lonely Beauregard Hotel in Bournemoth, and only the long-term tenants are still in residence. Life is stirred up, however, when the beautiful Ann Shankland arrives to see her alcoholic ex-husband, John Malcolm, who is secretly engaged to Pat Cooper, the woman who runs the hotel. Meanwhile, snobbish Mrs Railton-Bell discovers that the kindly if rather doddering Major Pollock, played by David Niven, who won an Oscar for his performance, a retired officer who likes to find out more...

When a group of disparate characters crash in the merciless desert of the Sahara, it would seem their fate is sealed, but not all of them are so willing to offer up their life to the sands, and so begins a race against time to create from the wreckage a means of escape. Flight of The Phoenix is a classic example of the "they don't make them like that anymore", part boys own adventure, part astute study of human nature in the face of adversity, a gripping story intelligently adapted from Elleston find out more...