Factual error: Harry is a LAPD SWAT team member. SWAT trains and trains and trains, then exercises and trains some more. Harry would not be investigating the case as shown when he asked to see the files for the last 10 years. If he was on desk duty for his injury, yes, he could be working the investigation. But soon after, he was on the entry team at Payne's house. That would have required more prep work by the SWAT team that Harry would have had to be doing instead of looking through the files.
Factual error: In the bus freeway gap jump, a second after driving off the freeway edge, the bus has fallen beneath that edge level of the freeway. It would be impossible for it to have regained altitude to be above the freeway on the other side. It would have hit at best halfway between the wheels of the bus, if at all.
Factual error: As long as gravity is a constant, there is no physical way that the bus (traveling at 68 mph) could possibly jump the level, 50-foot horizontal gap in the freeway. Even at triple or quadruple that speed, the bus would invariably drop vertically by as much as a meter, with catastrophic results.
Revealing mistake: Before Jack rips the door off the Jaguar, he speeds ahead of the bus and then opens the driver's door at highway speed. At 50 MPH there would be a lot of air resistance, yet Jack opens the door effortlessly.
Other mistake: As Traven is about to slide under the bus on the small trolley, you can see his feet are only just going to get under the bus. Cut to a camera shot from the side, and now the front of the bus is significantly higher.
Continuity mistake: When the bus jumps over the gap in the freeway, when they take off, Jack shields Annie with his own body, but when it shows an exterior shot of the bus when they have landed, Jack is gone, then he comes back again in a different shot.
Plot hole: Payne's finger prints would've been all over the elevator, on his shotgun, and near the area where he killed the security guard as he was never shown wearing gloves. Since he was a former police officer, I would assume his prints would've been on file with the FBI and in a multitude of databases. You would think they would've been able to identify him much earlier in the movie than they did by running the prints through all databases of finger prints.
Suggested correction: IAFIS, the FBI fingerprint database, wasn't implemented until 1999. At the time this film was released, the LA police would have to individually run any prints found through the databases they wanted to search. Essentially, they would have to know beforehand that Howard Payne was a former Atlanta police officer or have made a wild guess.
Continuity mistake: When Jack and Annie arrive in the ambulance, as Jack leaves the ambulance he closes the side door. However, when Annie gets bored and gets up to leave the ambulance via the same exit that Jack did earlier, that door is now open.
Continuity mistake: Traven drives at high speed down the hard shoulder of the freeway to get to the bus to avoid the big traffic jam. When Traven cannot get on the bus, the black Jaguar XJS is now close at hand, which would have been impossible - it was way back in the traffic and couldn't have got to him that quickly.
Revealing mistake: The Boeing 707 freighter that gets blown up by the bus bomb is obviously a "scrapped" plane (a plane that has lived out its usefulness and is being readied to be scrapped). One good way of telling this is the plane's exterior shows heavy weathering wear from being stored a long time. But someone told me the way it looks could also be a hasty paint job using ordinary house paint. Either way, it's still something to look for.
Factual error: When the bus is forced to exit the freeway due to the stopped traffic up ahead, the exit taken is a curved exit and stays level. The storyline mentions this was the Western Ave exit from the Santa Monica freeway. The real exits for Western Ave (from each direction) head straight uphill to the street above and with no curves at all.
Revealing mistake: At the beginning, when they're talking about "shoot the hostage," the angle of Keanu Reeves is out of focus for a good five seconds. It drifts into focus.
Revealing mistake: The monitor Payne is using to the watch the inside of the bus is nowhere to be seen every time the inside of his hideout is shown. Only until it's revealed he had a camera hidden is the monitor shown.
Revealing mistake: When the bus jumps the gap and comes into land, you can see there are no passengers, not even dummies.
Audio problem: Right before they get off on the first exit to city streets, there's a shot of one of the passengers (Helen) who makes a distressed moaning noise. Her moan has an odd noticeable echo that is very out of place.
Plot hole: It is never definitively stated if the bomb is tied directly to the axle, triggered by the speedometer instrumentation or throttle. Regardless, as long as the wheels keep spinning above 50mph the bomb will not explode by design. This means that if you lifted the wheels of the bus off the ground or you bottom out, you could keep accelerating without any speed at all. This could be accomplished in any number of ways. One example would be driving on grass and keeping the tires spinning.
Suggested correction: And that would accomplish precisely nothing. They know Payne is watching them and he explicitly stated no-one is allowed to get off the bus or he will detonate it, only making an exception for the injured driver. What good is finding a way to keep the wheels in motion if everyone is still stuck on the bus?
The mistake is suggesting that you basically find a way to stop the bus but keep the wheels spinning such as grounding it on a hill. Then while the bus is stationary, just (I'm assuming here) put a weight on the accelerator to keep the wheels spinning and then everyone just hop off and walk away. However, you're correct in that Howard is watching the live feed so would just blow the bomb when people got off.
I fully understood what the entry was suggesting, but Payne's demand that everyone stays on the bus under penalty of detonation voids it. Even if that wasn't the case, finding a way to somehow stop the bus but keeping the wheels spinning (such as lifting it with a helicopter) would be a logistical nightmare in that scenario. Their plans to drive on the otherwise unoccupied freeway and then circle the airport runway were much more practical.
The other glaring problem with "stopping the bus while keeping the wheels moving" is those pesky laws of physics. Momentum, kinetic energy, and inertia would all prevent that from happening under any circumstance that could be quickly cobbled together by any police department. I'm sure physicists and engineers could come up with something given a few months and a buttload of money, but for this example you could consider it impossible - especially without causing a lot of passenger injuries.
Revealing mistake: In the elevator, Payne grabs Detective Temple by his nose holes, but it's very obvious that Payne is not grabbing his nose and Temple is pushing himself sideways and upwards with his left arm.
Revealing mistake: When Howard shoots the subway driver near the end, we see the driver collapse and die. Where did the damage from the bullets go? There's not much in the way of bullet holes or broken glass. Certainly an automatic weapon would've produced some damage.
