text: Demolition expert D.O. Guerrero, down on his luck and with a history of mental illness, buys both a ticket aboard Flight 2 and a large life insurance policy with the intent of committing suicide. He plans to set off a bomb in an attaché case while they fly over the Atlantic Ocean so that his wife, Inez, will collect $225,000 of insurance. His erratic behavior at the airport, including mistaking a Customs officer for a gate agent, attracts officials' attention. Inez finds a Special Delivery envelope from a travel agency and, realizing D.O. might be doing something desperate, goes to the airport to try to dissuade him. She informs officials that he had been fired from a construction job for "misplacing" explosives and that the family's financial situation is dire.
  Ada Quonsett manages to evade the employee assigned the task of putting her on a flight back to Los Angeles. Enchanted by the idea of a trip to Rome, she talks her way past the gate agent, boards Flight 2 and sits next to Guerrero. When Flight 2's crew is made aware of Guerrero's situation, they turn the plane back toward Chicago without informing the passengers. Once Ada is discovered, her help is enlisted by the crew to get to the briefcase, but the ploy fails when a troublesome passenger interferes and returns the case to Guerrero.
  Demerest tries to persuade Guerrero not to trigger the bomb, informing him that his insurance policy has been nullified. Guerrero moves to give Demerest the bomb, but just then the troublesome passenger yells out that Guerrero has a bomb. Guerrero runs into the lavatory and sets off the bomb, dying and blowing a three-foot hole in the fuselage. Gwen, just outside the door, is injured in the explosion and subsequent explosive decompression, but the pilots retain control of the airplane.