The exterior of the Russian prison is really the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio. It has been chosen for several movies because of its gothic, eerie appearance, most notably "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994).

One of the secretaries tells the president she can send a fax to the White House, and he replies something like: "If this works, I'll make you Postmaster General". In the closing credits, she's credited as "Future Postmaster General".

When Igor Korshunov gives his thumbprint for a background check, it shows his birthday as 3/21/58. This is Gary Oldman's birthday.

A little aside - when the terrorists first strike, in amongst the confusion you can hear someone shout "get the football!" The "football" is the name used for the case which contains the nuclear launch codes, but this is never explained. It's not a major thing, but interesting to note that they included it as a little detail. Good to know a childhood spent reading Tom Clancy books wasn't wasted...

Harrison Ford told Gary Oldman to actually hit him during their fight scenes.

In the scene where Harrison Ford is under the plane having the fight with the terrorist, if you listen really carefully to the music track, at one point when Harrison starts doing some damage you can hear the 7 notes from the Raider's of the Lost Ark movie. It's the "hero" or theme music used when Indie was kicking some butt.

The opening sequence, set in Almaty, Kazakhstan, was actually filmed in Cleveland. The exterior shots of the presidential palace were of Severance Hall, home of the Cleveland Orchestra, and the interior scenes were in City Hall.

Ilia Volokh plays one of the terrorists. He also played a dry-cleaners owner on "Friends" who claims never to have seen Air Force One, in the episode when Matt LeBlanc tries to put up a picture in his store.

The plot of the movie bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Edwin Corley's 1978 novel Air Force One. Corley is also the author of Sargasso, about an escape pod that lands with nobody inside, vaguely similar to a plot point in the movie.

All the women who survive in the film are wearing pants. The filmmakers didn't want women in skirts to go flying out of a plane.