Photo: Phil Caruso/HBO Max
The Flight Attendant on HBO Max fits into a unique genre: a comedy-thriller, focused on a hard partying, hard drinking flight attendant named Cassie Bowden (played by Kaley Cuoco) who ends up in an international web of intrigue after hooking up with a mysterious and handsome first class passenger (Alex Sokolov, played by Michiel Huisman) after a flight to Bangkok. The Flight Attendant is based on a New York Times bestselling book of the same name and the filming locations for The Flight Attendant are primarily in New York City, with some international spots here and there. The cast also includes Rosie Perez, Zosia Mamet, T.R. Knight, Michael Huisman, and Bebe Neuwirth.
Now, if the premise and some of the subsequent events seem semi-implausible, The Flight Attendant seems hyper aware of that. The show employs some interesting story-telling mechanisms that assist the hapless Cassie, and considering that Cassie is blacked out most of the time, her self-sabotaging actions can be excused through that vein. And the dialogue of other characters serve to counterbalance what she says and does, and yes, she’s often quite charming. You do wonder how she manages to keep her job and her friends, however. The Flight Attendant has enough to keep the viewer wondering whodunnit. International filming took place in March, at the early onset of the pandemic and it was one of the first productions to start filming after New York City reopened for business in August of this year. And now, without further ado, here are the filming locations you will find in The Flight Attendant!
1. JFK Airport
Photo: Phil Caruso/HBO Max
For her job at the fictional “Imperial Atlantic” airline, Cassie’s home base is New York City. She’s a first class stewardess doing international flights from John F. Kennedy Airport, located in Queens, New York City. Unlike a lot of other televisions that often recreate an airport in somewhere like the Manhattan Cruise Terminal, The Flight Attendant really filmed the airport scenes in JFK Airport. The difference shows, because it’s hard to recreate all of the signage, and mimic the architecture and layout of an airport, and make it still feel authentic. The shooting, which took place during hours the airport was still operational, caused quite a stir.
The actor Griffin Matthews who plays Shane said in an interview, “When you see us walking through airports, we were filming in multiple airports. We were really in Thailand. We were really in JFK…It was one of the first things that we shot—the walking through the airport scenes—which strangely enough caused such an uproar because they couldn’t get the airports shut down.” Other scenes, including the hotel rooms, airplane interiors, and apartments were filmed on sound stages in New York City.