When a 17-year-old cancer survivor finds herself the only conscious person aboard a Boeing 747, she must overcome fear, isolation, and her own fading strength to land the massive jet — guided only by the voice of a Navy officer who bets everything on a girl the world had already counted out.

SYNOPSIS:

ACT ONE

Seventeen-year-old Parker Peoples, a Black teen cancer survivor, races through the chaos of Chicago O’Hare Airport in 1986, desperate to catch her flight home to Oakland. She barely makes it onto Skyward Airlines Flight 374, squeezing into a first-class seat with the help of a kind gate agent and a protective stranger, June Jamison. Parker hides her radiation burns under a black headwrap, masking deeper scars of isolation and fear. Midair, as the sun sets, Parker drifts into a fitful sleep—only to awaken and discover an unthinkable nightmare: every passenger and crew member, including the pilots, are unconscious. Alone in a massive Boeing 747 hurtling through the night sky, Parker’s raw survival instinct ignites.

ACT TWO

Parker fights the rising panic inside her and stumbles into the cockpit, where she makes frantic radio contact with Navy Supervisor Captain Bennie Brooks—a steely but compassionate officer who quickly realizes Parker is their only hope. Brooks must remotely teach the teenager how to control a 400-ton jet with no flight experience, no crew, and only the flickering lights of the console to guide her. As Parker struggles to follow Brooks’ instructions, including moving the unconscious captain’s body and steering the plane, a pair of Navy F-18s intercept to monitor the unfolding crisis. When it’s discovered that contaminated food poisoned the passengers—and that Parker survived only because of her strict diet due to cancer—her lonely existence becomes her unexpected salvation. But new problems mount: an engine fails, a hydraulic system collapses, and Parker must fly manually after the autopilot disengages, her hands trembling against the yoke as her fears—and her past—threaten to overwhelm her.

ACT THREE

In a tense standoff with federal authorities, Captain Brooks defies bureaucratic orders to force an emergency landing at the abandoned Alameda Naval Air Station instead of a perilous short runway at Livermore. With no working glide path system, Parker must rely on gut, grit, and Brooks' voice in her ear to land the plane. The stakes rise higher when Parker discovers a young girl, Maddie, awake onboard—giving her not just a cockpit, but a child’s life in her hands. Braving severe turbulence, system failures, and the ghostly loneliness of command, Parker wrestles the wounded 747 through a heroic manual descent. In a white-knuckle landing that electrifies the nation, Parker slams the jet onto the cracked runway with inches to spare—saving hundreds. As emergency crews race to the scene, Parker steps onto the tarmac into the embrace of Captain Brooks, no longer the sick girl the world had counted out, but a true captain in every sense of the word.