Elena followed the attendant up the aisle, past hundreds of frightened faces, and stepped into the cockpit. What she saw explained the captain’s tone. The first officer was slumped and unconscious against his harness, pale and sweating, and the captain himself was gripping the controls with one hand while pressing the other to his own chest. “Food poisoning, we think,” the captain said through gritted teeth. “Both of us ate the crew meal. He’s out. I’m not far behind. Autopilot’s holding, but I can’t trust myself to bring her down, and there’s weather over Dublin.” He looked at her, desperate. “The attendant said you flew fighters. Please tell me you can help me land a commercial jet.”<\/p>\n
Elena’s stomach tightened. An F-16 and a wide-body airliner were different worlds, different systems, different weights, different everything. For one long second, all the reasons she had walked away from responsibility rose up in her throat. Then she looked at the captain’s graying face, and she thought of the mother with the baby, the elderly couple holding hands, three hundred people who would live or die based on what she did in the next hour. She slid into the first officer’s seat, buckled in, and put her hands on the controls the way she had put her hands on controls a thousand times before. “Tell me everything about this aircraft,” she said, her voice steady. “And get air traffic control on the line. We’re bringing this plane home.”<\/p>\n
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