The Langoliers

Storyline

On a cross-country fight from Los Angeles to Boston, a group of passengers awaken to find that the majority of the plane's passengers and all of the crew have disappeared. Just before taking off, the flight captain, called Brian Engel (David Morse), is told that his ex-wife and son have died in a fire at home. Because of the shock, he won't be able to pilot the plane and becomes one of the passengers. A blind girl, Dinah Catherine Bellman (Kate Maberly) who is travelling with her aunt Vicki (Julie Arnold Lisnet), mentions that she gets weird vibrations from one of her fellow passengers. Dinah wakes up on her own. She tries to find somebody else and calls out "Anyone here?" several times. She finds only the loose personal objects from missing people: watches, loose change, passports, glasses, even a wig. When she touches the latter, she screams out, waking up Engel and the remaining survivors. All the rest of the people have disappeared. They are 10 people, all in all. One of the passengers, Bob Jenkins (Dean Stockwell), tries to peer out of the windows, but he can only see darkness. While the majority of the group intends to find out what is going on, the only one who is not as concerned about their current predicament is a businessman named Craig Toomy (Bronson Pinchot). He was the person who gave out bad vibes to the little girl. In fact, he is going to a meeting to explain some weird accountancy which has been taking place in his office and has just been found out, but strangely enough, when he is told so by his assistant, he seems quite happy and satisfied about it, and not worried the slightest bit. A rather irrational businessman, Toomy is more concerned about making his business meeting on time, seeing the events at hand as some form of major inconvenience on his part.They have to use some force to calm him down, although he only ends up with the minor problem of a blood running nose. They force the cockpit's door open, and Engel tries to radio out for help, but nobody is listening. The passengers introduce each other, with nothing better to do. Bob is a mystery writer, the blonde lady is Laurel Stevenson (Patricia Wettig), a school teacher; a cute young man, who is a college student of music called Albert Kaussner (Christopher Collet) and who can play the violin; Bethany Simms (Kimber Riddle), a young female student who was going to spend some days with some relatives on vacation; Don Gaffney (Frankie Faison), who is an aircraft mechanic, travelling to Boston on his first assignment. The rude businessman does not want to say his name to the others, and he shouts that he has no time to lose, he needs to arrive to his destination. The rest of the passengers threaten to hit him if he doesn't stop scaring Dinah. At that moment, he suffers a hallucination in which he sees everybody as a kind of human-form gelatin. Then, the attack passes. It looks like all the people still present in the plane had been sleeping, while the ones who mysteriously disappeared had been awake - at least, that is Bob's deduction. Engle manages to pilot the plane to an airport in Bangor, Maine. However, no-one from air traffic control answers, and no-one is found at the airport. Dinah can't hear or smell anybody and she also can't feel any insect, bird or crawling bug. As the group continues to explore the abandoned airport, Craig Toomy remembers an occasion in which he was a small boy (Christopher Cooke) and he got a B+ on an examination, and his father, Roger (John Griesemer) went bananas over it, calling him a loser, a nobody, and punishing him. He snaps and attempts to take one of the survivors hostage, demanding to get to his appointment on time. Using a gun, it surprises everyone when the trigger is pulled, but no bullet is released. This allows the others to overpower Toomy and tie him up. Upon further inspection, they find that there were bullets in the gun, but the gun still doesn't discharge. Moreover, going to a food stand, food and drink appear to have no taste or reaction when exposed to the air. Bob Jenkins, the mystery-writer, surmises that somehow, they must have flown through a time rift. On the flight leaving Los Angeles, Brian recalls that a stewardess had noted to him that the Aurora Borealis was spotted over the Mojave Desert on their flight path, and they might pass near it. Mark Lindsay Chapman... Nick Hopewell Baxter Harris ...Rudy Warwick Tom Holland... Harker Michael Louden ... Richard Logan Kymberly Dakin... Doris Heartman David Forrester... Danny Keene Chris Hendrie... James Deegan Jennifer Nichole Porter... Gate Agent Stephen King... Tom Holby David Kelly ... Little Boy Stephanie Dunham ... Little Girl John Winthrop Philbrick ... Father