North and South Limbawe are in conflict over oil and a despotic General plans to overthrow his own government in South Limbawe and attacks his neighbors to the North. String and Dom are sent by Archangel to aid North Limbawe and it's leader, Seku Logana, but Logana has his own prejudices about receiving aid for his cause. Also in the mix is an old Vietnam buddy of Hawke's, Marty Vidor, who is working as a mercenary for South Limbawe, and Hawke is hesitant to take him on since Vidor just may know the location of the missing Saint John.

While demonstrating the capabilities of the new prototype supercopter codenamed 'Airwolf', Dr. Charles Moffet goes rogue, steals the chopper and kills almost all of the observers. At least one man -- Michael Coldsmith Briggs III survives. Briggs, codenamed 'Archangel' is the head of a covert organization called 'The Firm' and Archangel calls upon the one man in the world he knows that can retrieve the copter. The problem is Stringfellow Hawke is not only a loner, but a recluse as well. The amount of money the Firm is willing to pay for Airwolf's recovery is irrelevant. Hawke wants just one thing - the safe return of his brother, Saint John, who was captured during the Vietnam war and is evidently a POW.

A movie producer hires Santini Air for a dangerous stunt involving the landing of a helicopter onto the roof of a moving semi. Dom and String nearly come to blows, however, when String tries to convince Dom that his reaction time might not be up to snuff for this particular action sequence. Things get even more dicey when it appears that the production might just be an elaborate cover for a high-stakes gold heist.

Dr. Robert Winchester is a brilliant researcher and a former test pilot who helped design Airwolf. Now, he's asking for Hawke's help in test flying a simulator that he's designed to enable the Firm to train future test pilots to fly Airwolf. Reluctantly, Hawke agrees, but determines that the simulator's "feel" is a little off. Archangel convinces Hawke to let Winchester hook up the real Airwolf to his computers in order to get a more realistic demonstration. This allows Winchester to engage in a little friendly flying competition with Hawke but it also allows the Russians to nearly get their hands on the high tech super copter.

In the midst of it's key part in delivering and collecting a leading American scientist to top secret sanctions aimed at cooling international tensions with Russians, Airwolf develops a seeming computer virus in it's systems, which periodically takes pilot control and makes it a potential killing machine in the air. The systems have been taken over buy a ""time-bomb"" left by the chopper's evil creator, Dr. Moffett, who has programmed it to begin the deadly behaviour if not given it a recognition code by him at that time. Hawke and Dominic must decide whether to let the Firm scientists try and work on the machine - risking having them snatching it back away from them - or to find another way to try and cure The Lady before completing their part in the sanctions, knowing that if they fail to completely cure it, they jeopardise not only international relations, but potentially hundreds of lives...

After an old Vietnam buddy of Hawke's is shot in the desert when trying to escape a corrupt Sheriff, Hawke gets a call from an inmate who had been in jail with the man to aleart him of the escape, and flies with Dominic in Airwolf to Pope County, Texas, to investigate. There, Hawke meets Highway Patrol Deputy Caitlin O'Shannessy, who had a run in with Sheriff Bogard prior to the killing; but Hawke's appearance on the scene sees him arrested by Bogard and released on a private game reserve, where gun-happy sportsmen pay big money to hunt big game – and Hawke is the latest bait...

String is captured by Latin American revolutionaries while attempting to rescue American archaeological students trapped by a coup.

String comes to the aid of his nephew who asks String for help when his mother disappears for a week.

A Russian mole discovers that scientists in the U.S.S.R. have developed a lethal serum that instantly kills anyone exposed to it. He steals a vial of the serum and contacts his friend Archangel for help in escaping the country with his family. Archangel dispatches Hawke and Santini for the rescue effort, but Airwolf can't handle that much passenger weight -- unless all her armaments are stripped leaving the supercopter defenseless.

String must add Caitlin to the Airwolf crew, in order to rescue Archangel from behind enemy lines.

String discovers that an old friend is a double agent when a schematic he was to turn over to the FIRM is stolen.

Hawke meets a mercenary who claims to have information regarding his missing brother. When they part company, Hawke loses consciousness in his helicopter and crashes. When he comes to, he finds himself in a hospital. The medical staff inform him that he has been in a coma for the better part of a year. His friends, Archangel and Dom, were killed on a POW camp raid, but in the process, their heroism helped rescue Hawke's brother Saint John. Believing that his "mission" is over, Hawke reveals the location of Airwolf to his captors, then discovers that it has all been an elaborate ruse and he has inadvertantly turned over the super copter to a group of foreign conspirators.

When new hi-tech attack chopper HX1 is stolen by an elite group of mercenaries, the tactics used fits those that Hawke's MIA brother St. John was trained in, and Hawke is certain that his brother may somehow be involved. Dominic begs him to leave well alone, but Hawke is adamant, and with Archangel insisting that if it cant be retrieved, the Firm will blow HX1 and anyone flying it out of the sky, Hawke goes back into his past and some of the people he knows from it, to desperately try and get a lead on the group and mercenaries and possibly St. John... But the HX1 is so powerful, it may even be able to blow Airwolf out of the sky...

String must bring in a disgruntled former Firm employee who's been denied his retirement benefits.

After Tess Dixon, the wife of infamous crime-lord Cullen Dixon, escapes his bodyguards while swimming in the sea at night, Archangel asks Hawke and Santini to deliver her safely via Airwolf to a top-secret location, where she will testify against a cartel of corrupt businessmen who are plotting to assassinate high-ranking officials in Washington. Tess is an old flame of Hawke's, something which makes him very reluctant to accept the mission, before he finally agrees, but they come under continual attack as Cullen Dixon's men aim to see that Tess never makes it to testify...

An ambitious executive at the Firm makes a subversive play for Archangel's job. A bomb is planted aboard a vintage helicopter owned by Dominic Santini and he's forced to crash land. When Hawke and Archangel go hunting for Dom, Airwolf is ambushed and shot down. The two must convince a group of locals to help them repair their damaged tail rotor. Complicating matters on Dom's end, he must contend with a stowaway aboard his chopper -- a young girl searching for her dad.

String and Caitlin are sent to a remote Alaskan research station where a deadly Russian bacteria has been let loose.

Dom inherits from the estate of a millionaire whom he had earlier rescued from a plane crash.

After being forced down by a volcano eruption, String and Dom discover a mining town being run as a slave colony.

Hawke takes a seemingly luxurious Santini Air job, piloting and accompanying a beautiful, high-flying business woman for a few days, but ends up duped into being hypnotised in an elaborate plot by master criminal John Bradford Horn. Horn has desire to take over a small country as his own, and intends to have the hypnotised Hawke deliver Airwolf to him so he can use the chopper's fierce fire-power to succeed in his goal...

Hawke is at a friend's prestigious ceremony when Archangel pulls him out and accuses him of being involved in a robbery the previous night in which items that could be used by Airwolf were stolen by thieves in a helicopter matching the Santini Air chopper. But Archangel is suspended by the Firm, who've built a new model of Airwolf – Airwolf II, called 'Redwolf', and piloted by Harlan ""Tex"" Jenkins, who worked on the original Airwolf project and has always insisted that he, not Dr. Moffett, was the true creator. But things backfire for the Firm when Jenkins steals Airwolf II - and before he hands it over to the foreign agents he's in league with, he plans a showdown with his old rival – Stringfellow Hawke; a duel that brings Airwolf vs. Airwolf...

At a National Air Race show, Hawke and Dominic befriend an attractive pilot racer, unaware that she's being pursued by her boss and his henchmen after stealing some tapes that can prove that a new combat jet is too unstable to be flown – something that her boss is determined to cover up at any cost...

The families of one of String's friends from Vietnam are kidnapped along with Dom and Caitlin by people seeking revenge against those who destroyed their village during the Vietnam conflict.

Hawke and Dom must stop a suspected traitor from turning an advanced military fighter over to the Russians in exchange for his son who was born in Vietnam. Things get complicated, though, when Hawke realizes that he was also involved with the boy's mother during roughly the same era as the child's birth.

String receives information that St. John is being held in a POW camp, but by the time a rescue operations put into effect St. John has been moved.