Five Years Too Late?
If "Meteor" had been released four or five years earlier - say, around the time of "Earthquake," "The Towering Inferno" and "Airport 1975" - it would have likely been a blockbuster on the scale of any of these three films.
By the time it arrived in 1979, the disaster film era was dead (killed by "The Swarm", "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure", etc.)
"It's people..."