The captain ignores a warning by a passenger, a jazz cellist (Roosevelt Grier), that he suspects his erratically behaving seatmate, Sgt. Jerome K. Weber (James Brolin), to be the hijacker. The weather at Anchorage is so poor, a United States Air Force ground-controlled approach specialist (Claude Akins) is called in. His radar shows a small aircraft with radio failure that is approaching the same runway, but Flight 502 has too little fuel to go around. O'Hara sees the other aircraft at the last moment and manages to avoid a collision and land safely.