A commercial airliner passes through a temporal portal, taking it back in time 15,000 years to the latter part of the Pleistocene epoch. With no airports, radio, GPS guidance, etc., and running low on fuel, the flight crew puts the plane down on the flattest piece of land they can find, in what will one day be known as Western Montana.

The 50 survivors -- 2 pilots, 2 flight attendants, and 46 passengers -- don't know exactly where or when they are, but there are signs of the latter: woolly mammoths and mastodons; sabertooth- and cheetah-like cats; bison that are ten feet tall at the shoulders; and huge birds -- both vultures and birds-of-prey -- with wingspans and body weights three times anything our survivors had known in the 21st century.

The flight left New York City's JKF International on 6 March 2026 just after 2 pm and was scheduled to land at Seattle-Tacoma International around 8:25 pm. It had passed over Pennsylvania, the southern Great Lakes region, Minnesota, and North Dakota without incident.

The occupants included 3 pilots, 4 flight attendants, and 82 passengers.

4 hours into the flight, over what would one day be known as North Dakota, the plane had its strange experience, the temporal portal:

• The crew and passengers experienced sudden and excruciating pain, resulting in a loss of consciousness for a couple to several minutes.
• When the flight crew regained consciousness, they found that:
  
  • They had lost all communications and navigation signals.
  • They still had control of the plane but only in manual.
  • And cascading electrical losses threatened to cause the plane to eventually fall from the sky.

The flight crew took action:

• They decreased altitude and began searching for an airport.
• What they found was nothing! There was no sign of airports, cities, highways; there were no indications that Human Beings had ever existed on the land below them.
• A low fuel warning forced the pilot to look for a place to perform an emergency landing.
• He located a piece of relatively flat prairie and headed for it.
• Coming in too high, he was forced to put the plane down between a modestly sized river and a short but threatening mountain range. (Traveling northward, they crashed at the red circle.)

The damage was extensive but not as bad as it could have been:

• Both wings were torn away from the fuselage, but there was no fire.
• The plane skidded almost 200 yards over rough ground, splitting in two between the passenger section and the tail.
• The passenger section/cockpit rolled over onto its side in the midst of a small grove of trees and undergrowth.

Initially, the plane had a flight crew of 3, cabin crew of 4, and passenger manifest of 82.

There would initially be 50 survivors: 2 pilots, 2 flight attendants, and 66 passengers. (There will be more deaths in the days immediately following the crash I assure you.)

The flight left New York City's JKF International on 6 March 2026 just after 2 pm and was scheduled to land at Seattle-Tacoma International around 8:25 pm. It had passed over Pennsylvania, the southern Great Lakes region, Minnesota, and North Dakota before...

Just about 4 hours into the flight, over what would one day be known as North Dakota, the plane had its strange experience, the temporal portal:

• The crew and passengers experienced sudden and excruciating pain, resulting in a loss of consciousness for a couple to several minutes.
• When the flight crew regained consciousness, they found: that they had lost all communications and navigation signals; they still had control of the plane but only in manual; and they were suffering cascading electrical losses that the pilot feared would eventually cause the plane to fall from the sky.

The pilot decreased altitude and began searching for an airport. Instead, he found no airports, no cities, no highways; there were no indications that Human Beings had ever existed on the land below them.

An unexpected and unexplainable low fuel warning forced the pilot to look for a place to perform an emergency landing. He located a piece of relatively flat prairie and headed for it. Unfortunately, they came in too high; they had to wait to pass over a river, then put it down hard before hitting a low-lying range of mountains. (Traveling northward, they crashed at the red circle.)

Both wings were torn away from the fuselage, but there was no fire. The plane skidded almost 200 yards over rough ground, splitting in two between the passenger section and the tail; the former rolled over onto its side in the midst of a small grove of trees and undergrowth.

Of the initial flight crew of 3, cabin crew of 4, and passenger manifest of 82, there would initially be 50 survivors: 2 pilots, 2 flight attendants, and 66 passengers. (There will be more deaths in the days immediately following the crash I assure you.)