TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-FIVE lives were in the hands of a pilot who was having a widow-maker heart attack at 35,000 feet.
There was no time to tell his copilot to get out of the bathroom and come fly the plane. No time to teach the flight attendant standing at the back of the cockpit how to work the radio. No time to declare an emergency to air traffic control. No time to warn the passengers and crew in the cabin to hang on. There was no time to do anything because he never even realized what was happening. He simply felt a sudden tightness in his chest—and a split second later, his dead body slumped forward on the yoke, and the plane went into an uncontrolled nosedive.
Instantly, everything in the cabin shifted forward. Sodas and bags of pretzels slid off tray tables. Cell phones flew out of hands. Passengers in line for the bathroom fell into one another. And anyone not buckled in found they were no longer in their seats.
Doors to the carts and carriers stretched across the back galley swung open in unison. Sleeves of cups, packets of sugar, plastic-wrapped cookies, pots of hot coffee, heavy pallets of soda—everything was dumped out, crashing onto the floor and spilling out into the plane.
The flight attendant mid-cabin lunged after the cart, but the aisle was clear for the fully stocked beverage trolley to barrel toward the front of the plane. Eight rows up, the four-hundred-pound cart ran over a man’s foot, crushing his bones, before lodging itself tenuously between rows.
Every seat in the plane was filled. But in that first moment, that first drop, the cabin was completely silent. No one screamed. No one made a sound. There was no fear, only surprise. Because just like the pilot—unaware of what the pain in his chest meant—the two hundred and ninety-four other souls on board Coastal Airways Flight 235 hadn’t figured it out yet either.
Moments later, once they realized they were about to die, the screaming began.
Push the yoke forward, the plane goes down. Pull the yoke back, the plane goes up.
That was the extent of what the flight attendant in the cockpit for the bathroom-break security procedure knew about the controls. That and if she didn’t pull the pilot back off the yoke, he would send them straight into the ground.
Her positioning could not have been worse. She was five one and barely a hundred pounds; the captain was well over six feet, pushing three hundred, and she had no leverage. She could only reach him at an awkward angle from behind and to the side of the chair.
Stepping into a wide straddle between the seat and the center control panel, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled back with a grunt.
His body barely moved. The yoke stayed pushed forward as far as it would go.
At the front of the plane, the flight attendant on the floor in the forward galley crawled toward the lavatory. Breakfast entrées squished under her hands as broken first-class china bloodied her knees. Reaching the bathroom, she pounded on the door.
“Greg,” she cried, her voice barely audible over the passengers’ screaming. She stopped to listen for a response from the copilot inside—but there was nothing.
When the plane first dove, she’d heard a loud slam in the lav, followed by breaking glass. Since then—nothing. The flight attendant didn’t know what was happening in the cockpit, but she did know the only other person on board who knew how to fly the plane needed to get out of the bathroom and back up there.
“Greg, please! Help!” she pleaded, pounding the door with both fists.
There was no response.
The arms of the flight attendant in the cockpit were shaking. Her hold on the dead pilot was weakening. Nearly all his weight continued to press the yoke forward.