Okay…the plane’s leaving from LA, to Chicago. Ted (Robert Hayes) catches up with Elaine (Julie Haggerty) at the airport. Okay. Elaine says, referring to her decision to request the Atlanta run, that she’s moving on with her life when she gets back to Chicago.
The insinuation is that Elaine and Ted live in Chicago.
So why is Ted driving a cab in LA?
It couldn’t be one of the gags, I wouldn’t think; it requires a little more thought and reasoning than most of their jokes need.
Dude. You’re trying to apply thought and reasoning to Airplane!? 
My WAG: Elaine covers the Chicago-LA run and is going to switch to the Chicago-Atlanta run. He lives in LA and she lives in Chicago - therefore she will be out of his life for good.
Is there an insinuation that he currenty lives in Chicago? Could it have been a reference to the past when they lived together?
Chicago? What is it?
It’s a large city, but that isn’t important now. And don’t call me Shirley.
I’m guessing it’s not impossible for a Flight Attendant to have more than one Home Base. She probably has a house (or larger apartment) with Ted in LA, and a small apartment of her own in Chicago that she uses as her Home Away From Home. Perhaps she has few belongings in the house/apt. with Ted and was able to stow all of them away in her checked baggage and that one carry-on.
In Zero Hour!, the movie that Airplane! was based on, Elaine is named Ellen, Ted is married to her, and Joey is their son. His wife leaves a note at his house, presumably telling him she’s running away with Joey from their home in the Winnipeg area to some unspecified place in Vancouver. She’s obviously left a lot of her belongings behind in their house, as none of their furniture is much disturbed, and is flying away with only the bare essentials.
Perhaps in both movies, she intends to send for her stuff to be collected from Ted’s house later.
I’m thinking of where he asks, “Don’t you feel anything for me anymore?”
She responds with, “It takes a lot to make love last. And, above all, it takes respect. And I can’t live with a man I don’t respect.”
Allow me to clarify:
At one point, Ted says something to the extent of, “When yu come back to Chicago, we’ll have dinner.”
That’s when she says that she’s requested the Atlanta run. So she’s going from LA to Chicago to Atlanta. She specifies that Chicago is her home base during that conversation.
So Ted lives in Chicago, but works in LA as a cabdriver.
It’s a spoof
But we’re not living in the past any more. Or the present, either. This is the future!
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit taking amphetamines.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue!
I don’t know what to make of this apparent contradiction in the narrative.
Oh, you can make a hat or a brooch or a pteradactyl. . .
can anyone tell me what’s happened in this thread from the beginning?
To the tower, Rapunzel!
Chicago? Isn’t that the home of WZAZ, where disco lives forever?
I asked a continuity question about a movie that is one of, if not THE spoof film of all time. It bends the 4th wall, it presents unlikely situations, etc.
And the rest of the posters have started offering quotes from the film.
Well, let’s see: First the earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat, so they all died, and they turned into oil. And then the Arabs came and they bought Mercedes Benzes. And Prince Charles started wearing all of Lady Di’s clothes.
Heres a quick question…
Have you ever seen a grown man naked?
Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?