Wrong--the passengers may have been cast according to their stereotyped titles, but in the movie they're just a carful of scared people. They're handled convincingly, and the details of the hijack are worked out in a straightforward, plausible way; the film concentrates on the communications between Walter Matthau, trying to buy time, and Robert Shaw, maintaining credibility. We don't have to endure a series of "Airport"-style vignettes in which a pregnant woman goes into labor, a guitar-playing nun cheers people up, etc.