Revealing mistake: After Jack has taken command of "Tuneman"s car, in the wide shots of them chasing the bus you can tell it's not Keanu Reeves driving. The stunt driver has slightly longer hair in a more squared crew cut.
Continuity mistake: In the scene where Jack is fighting Dennis Hopper on the roof of the subway train we see Jack lying on the top of the train getting punched by Dennis. We briefly cut away, and then back to Jack and the corrugations on the train roof have rotated through ninety degrees.
Continuity mistake: In the scene where the plane is blown up at LAX, the intact plane is shown with no mountains in the background. However, the scene showing an exploding plane has a backdrop of desert mountains, presumably Antelope Valley California.
Continuity mistake: When Jack is running across the street in downtown Los Angeles, in two different camera shots two different red cars are shown stopped in the same place to let him cross the street.
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.
Continuity mistake: After the first bus blows up, Jack hears the phone ringing. It is a two phone stand. When Jack first reaches for the phone to answer it you can see he answers the phone on the right hand side. To the right of the phone you can only see trees to the right side. In every scene after that, he is on the left hand side phone.
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.
Factual error: The bomber wants his money by 11 am. The sun should be almost directly overhead. Why then are there late afternoon-early evening shadows at the end of the film?
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 it's 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, 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.
Visible crew/equipment: The camera operator and camera are visible reflected in Tuneman's sunglasses. It's especially evident right before he crashes into the water barrels.
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.
