"There was no parody of the underlying concepts, just of the specific details, most of which i assume didnt even exist in the original movies."
Airplane is just Zero Hour! rewritten with gags tossed in. I'm not even kidding. Same plot, same characters, entire lines of dialogue lifted from the latter and recontextualized in the former. So you're half-right on that count. But it also means you're sorely wrong on the other half, because yeah, those are all details that regularly occur in the type of movies Airplane! is spoofing.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.
Airplane! isn't racist (or I guess "rasist"). The film's satire is fairly obvious; I'm guessing you're about 13 and therefore haven't seen any films from the classic Transportation Disaster genre, but Airplane! spoofs the inherent ridiculousness of the concept by exaggerating its often-formulaic tropes to the point of absurdity. "Random gags" are an awfully basic element of comedy. Ask your dad about humor if you still don't understand.
That's a weirdly specific and highly inaccurate age to throw out there. Airplane! itself was released 33 years ago, I really don't know why it's reasonable to suspect that most people under the age 40 should be familiar with those films.
I mean Zero Hour, the film it parodies the most was released in 1957. I think it's not irrational to think that people can not have watched films made over half a century ago without having to be a teen.
As this film is a parody of a specific group of films, it's got a lot of in-jokes throughout (as an aside, ZAZ was big on completely random jokes at the same time, so you're not wrong that some of them are just trying stuff out).
The film uses a lot of cliches which have since faded from a lot of the modern films. The parody moves these cliches up to eleven. For example, look at the flashbacks. Since movies outdo each other in terms of how tragic a hero's past is, Airplane shows him lose a bunch of people, and then keep losing more as his buddies drop like flies in the hospital. Other movies show a good relationship fall apart in flashbacks, so Airplane shows a perfect super saccharine sweet relationship complete with "From Here to Eternity" homage. Since movies often try to set the year with a Mr. Sandman Montage, Airplane gives us the full Saturday Night Fever "Stayin' Alive" dance number.
Other gags are about playing up the tension ("I picked the wrong day to quit smoking," etc), but the thing is, while humor is up to the viewer, it will lose its charm quickly unless you've seen what they're making fun of. If you haven't seen Zero Hour, Airport, or the like, then the parody will come across as random jokes.
illegitematus non carborundum est
You're probably right. I havent seen Zero hour, or really any disaster films, so that may have been why. Paradies are very funny when you dont get the jokes
A part of what makes it funny, to me, is how the most ridiculous of scenes are acted with the utmost sincerity and seriousness - there's the famous "Surely you can't be serious" exchange ("I am serious, and don't call me Shirley"), and the running gag of "I just wanted to wish you all good luck" among others. The main actors were all serious actors at that time of their careers, and their straight-faced delivery of absurd lines made the movie.
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Random gags thrown onto a normal movie
I often feel bad to give a negative review of a classic, but, look at me, doing it anyway while i will ignore the rasism, given the time it was made, i just... didnt find it that funny :/ and i watched it with my dad, and we always find movies funny. The main problem for me, was that the jokes were so obviously tacked on. There was no parody of the underlying concepts, just of the specific details, most of which i assume didnt even exist in the original movies. sure, it was amusing: the basketball player was pretty funny, but, so? the movie wasnt a parody, it was a totally viable, fairly well-acted movie with random gags thrown in that ruined the mood without creating a better one. not to say the gags werent funny, and it was pretty fun, but... not a proper paradoy, and not a proper comedy, imo.
if someone wants to correct me, i usually get why classics or cult classics are awesome, but this one not so much.