Crisis at 30,000 Feet: Engine on Fire, Kid in Command

Chikarta's first woman airline captain was also its chief aircraft engineer. That was Hannah Judson, and she died on the job. She woke up in the body of a nine-year-old named Naomi, with her own memory intact, on a flight Naomi was taking with her mother. An engine blew apart above ten thousand metres. The cockpit lost pressure and the plane went out of control with several hundred people on board. The adults in the cabin had nothing. Naomi got into the cockpit, worked from what she remembered of flying and of building these aircraft, and put the plane down. Word went through the aviation industry. A family of passengers who had talked down to her told the story afterwards as their own doing. An executive from a competing airline said publicly that a nine-year-old could not have flown it, and the press stayed on her. Naomi went back to designing aircraft and to work on the Ambition.