Le Comte de Monte Cristo (Count of Monte Cristo) influenced Airman

While Colfer hasn't, to my knowledge, explicitly described Airman as a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo, it is fair to say that it shares the novel's classic narrative framework: Gifted young hero → false accusation → imprisonment → self-improvement → daring escape → return under a new identity → confrontation with the conspirators. That structure, first made famous by Dumas, has become one of the enduring templates for adventure fiction, and Airman is one of its clearest modern echoes.