A Lost Movie - From 1977?

So, I caught this movie on the Sunday Afternoon TV matinee a couple of times. That was the 1980s, and the movie had been made in 1977.

It was made as an ABC TV movie. You know the variety, tons of people you know from (name all the TV shows) and the threat of impending doom in some kind of a crisis.

So, I see it on YouTube, and read the caption. Apparently, the original version of the movie was considered "lost" for some time. This upload is from a tape that was found in the personal belongings of the late actor Burgess Meredith, after his family was kind enough to give a film historian permission to look through them. The movie is "SST: Death Flight." (Well, that title certainly hints that something might go wrong on the airplane.) Burgess Meredith is in the cast, along with a ton of familiar faces. The pilot is the dad from the Brady Bunch. The head stewardess is Ginger from Gilligan's Island. There are many, many more

This surprises the heck out of me. A movie that was made by a major network, in a time when movies of the week were considered "Event TV," rerun a lot for years after on local stations, that isn't something I would think of being "lost." I think of stuff like silent movies, the older "found in the vault" stuff on Turner Classic Movies, that sort of material. Not something made in the late 1970s by a major TV network which is still in business. Especially after home video started getting big in the 1980s, and someone at the network could have figured out the potential for some money to be made there down the road. Anyway, it gets my attention, amazing how stuff that is "seen" around us can be in danger of going away.

Thanks to Mr. Meredith, here is the movie, for those who would like to check it out. Not what I would have thought of as a lost movie, but that's what got my attention about it.