 Heavy metal singer Slade Craven is scheduled to perform his farewell concert on a Boeing 747, TransCon Airlines flight 619, which will be flying from Los Angeles to Toronto, and the concert is scheduled to be broadcast over the internet. It has been said that the FAA has received threats that they had better allow this concert to take place. Erica Black is a reporter who is on the airplane with her cameraman Ethan, covering the concert. For the past two years, FBI agent Kate Hayden has been after hacker Nick Watts, who has gained access to the live broadcast of the concert. When Kate arrives at Nick s home, Kate and Nick see something that they never thought was supposed to be part of the broadcast Craven kills the pilot and takes the airplane hostage. Kate places a call and tells fellow agent Frank Garner and his partner Dave Barrett to check it out. Garner and Barrett head to the offices of Z-Web-TV, the company that s broadcasting the concert, and it s also the company that Erica works for, and the company is run by Benny Mitchell. When Barrett calls the FAA tower in San Diego and talks to Mr. Stopnow, the head of the tower, an explosion splinters the tower and kills Mr. Stopnow and his staff. This makes Garner and Barrett think that Craven has accomplices on the ground. Kate and Nick use Nick s equipment to figure out that the hostage taker is not the real Slade Craven, but an imposter named Simon Flanders, who has tied Craven up and locked Craven in a room on the airplane, and the room has a computer in it. Simon is a member of a Satanic Cult called Guardians of the Gateway, who see themselves as the vanguard of the Antichrist who will rule the next millenium. Simon was previously suspected of murder and charged with 5 counts of Arson, but the charges were dropped because of insufficient evidence. Now, the airplane has strayed off of its normal flight path, and is heading toward Kansas, because there is a small church in Stull, Kansas, that Simon and the Guardians of the Gateway are focusing on. Even when the Pope visited Colorado in 1996, he refused to fly over Eastern Kansas, because this part of Kansas is said to be one of the most unholiest places in the world. Simon plans to crash the airplane into the church in Stull, Kansas, because Simon and the cult believe that Satan will be released by the crash, and it turns out that Erica, who is a high ranking member of Guardians of the Gateway, masterminded this plot. Erica organized the whole plan to take the airplane hostage, and the co-pilot, MacIntosh ( played by Rutger Hauer), is also in on it, and his assignment is to crash the airplane into the church. After using the computer to talk to Kate and Nick, Craven gets out of the room he s in, and What Kate and Nick want to do is use Nick s equipment to guide Craven through the airplane so Craven can find Erica and her followers and try to rescue the hostages.