Charlie Chan and number one son Lee doze on a plane trip. Lee wakes up and discovers that the passengers and crew are all out cold. Everyone has been drugged (except for him and his pop, who didn't drink their coffee). A dead body is lying up near the cockpit and a large packet of cash has vanished.
The Chans investigate, of course, and suspects include a pilot and his stewardess girlfriend, a pair of suspicious-looking passengers who appear to be stalking a different stewardess, and a security guard in charge of transporting the now missing money. Back on the ground, the action flows from a nightclub to the Chan home and finally back to the airplane, where Mr. Chan gets everybody back on board to explain his deductions and draw out the killer....
Roland Winters and Keye Luke are just fine as the Chan father-son team. Unfortunately the script doesn't offer them much in the way of clever dialog, but they dutifully investigate the case and manage to keep it fairly lively. Mantan Moreland offers support as chauffeur Birmingham Brown. Tim Ryan as a detective and Milburn Stone as the airline pilot are among the other vaguely familiar faces in the cast.
It's not particularly exciting or surprising but at least the plot makes sense. So it's no classic--but heck, it is kind of fun.
