As the team lands the plane, there's a scene where it crashes through the airport window. The scene is actually from Airplane! (1980).
The ransom was paid in $1000 bills. Large bills (over $500) were no longer printed after 1945 and removed from general circulation in 1969. Five thousand of this denomination probably would have required a long time to acquire.
Dwight Schultz and Andrew Robinson are both Star Trek alumni. Schultz had a recurring role as Reginald Barclay on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) and Star Trek: Voyager (1995), while Robinson play Garak on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993).
Andrew Robinson's character demands money from the authorities in exchange for people's lives. Robinson played the serial killer Scorpio in Dirty Harry (1971) who also makes such demands.
This episode followed a standard theme present in many movies and TV shows from the 1970s and 1980s, where the pilots of an aircraft are incapacitated for one reason or another, and a passenger or passengers have to attempt to land the plane with the help of ground controllers.