Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421

Chris is Shannon’s mother and Will’s estranged wife. She is an industrial diver and owns a company that performs marine-related construction. Despite being a civilian with no rescue experience, she stands up to the Coast Guard and Navy and orchestrates a plan to rescue the sunken passengers—a plan that ultimately succeeds where the professionals fail. Compared to Will’s more cautious and anxious personality, Chris is calm, decisive, and headstrong. In tense moments, she displays an ability to numb herself to her emotions. Both she and Will struggled greatly after Annie’s death, but whereas Will became consumed by his grief, Chris threw all her energy into caring for Shannon. In a flashback to before the plane crash, she is ready to pack up Annie’s room and start to move forward on her own.

Over the course of the novel, Chris is single-minded and completely focused on rescuing Shannon from the aircraft, though she constantly runs into opposition from the military rescuers who doubt her. At the same time, she and Will reconnect over their joint efforts to save Shannon. Despite her initial concerns over Will’s overprotectiveness, she expresses gratitude that Will is with Shannon on the plane and apologizes for her role in their fractured marriage. After the rescue mission, she also realizes that it is time to move forward—not alone, but as a family. Chris’s efforts throughout the novel exemplify the theme of Everyday People in the Role of Heroes, as she is a classic “mama bear” figure who accomplishes a nearly impossible feat to rescue her child. Additionally, her reconnection with Will explores The Complexities of Familial Relationships and Healing From Grief and Trauma.

Shannon is Chris and Will’s 11-year-old daughter. She is much like her mother, handling the crisis at hand with a calm maturity and levelheaded demeanor. Before Shannon and Will leave for San Francisco, Chris reminds him that Shannon is “capable of more than [he] think[s]” (60). In the aftermath of the crash, Shannon indeed displays the same focused calm as Chris, comforting the younger Maia and “never [losing] her head” (275), for which Will later praises her. She is caught in the middle of the conflict between her parents and struggles against Will’s overprotectiveness, illustrating The Complexities of Familial Relationships; on the one hand, she understands his fears, but on the other, she longs to live her life and have the freedom to grow up. In both Will’s and Chris’s efforts to save the passengers of Flight 1421, Shannon’s safety is the primary focus and the driving force behind their actions.

Kit is the only surviving pilot of Flight 1421’s crash. Kit steps up to assume the role of her deceased captain in his stead and takes full responsibility for the safety of the passengers. Levelheaded and rational, she takes her duty seriously, embracing a leadership role to keep the group safe and calm. She does not immediately discount Will’s demand to shut the plane’s doors even though the flight crew initially resists it; she is willing to listen to reason rather than adhere strictly to protocol if it will ensure the safety of her passengers. By the end of the novel, she realizes that she only became a pilot to prove a point to her father, who was also a pilot, and she quits the profession to pursue her own path.

Fitz is a District Commander of the Coast Guard who spearheads the rescue operation. He is competent, experienced, and well intentioned, described as “egoless confidence incarnate” (63). Nonetheless, he is sometimes Chris’s antagonist, as he resists her plans to use the broken Falcon to save the survivors. Fitz and the rest of the rescue team resist allowing a civilian to organize the rescue mission, especially using a broken piece of equipment, but he and Chris come to an understanding as they connect over their experiences dealing with the death of a child. Fitz’s son died just over a year earlier, and his efforts in this rescue mission are driven by a desire to spare another parent that pain. Though they have the same goal and the same motivations, Fitz and Chris are opposed in their approach to solving this issue. At the end of the novel, Fitz readily admits that Will and Chris were right and that their expertise led to the passengers’ survival.

The passengers of Flight 1421 are central to the story. Newman uses this group to illustrate the theme of Human Resilience and Survival Against the Odds. The group “live[s] a lifetime in a handful of hours” and quickly grows to protect and depend on each other (228). Throughout their struggle on the aircraft, they manage to not only survive but also find moments of joy, levity, and connection. After the ordeal, they reconnect through their shared trauma and help each other heal. Along with Will, Shannon, and Kit, the passengers consist of the following.

Andy Matthews is selfish and combative, frequently clashing with Will and distrusting his decisions. He often does not get along with the other passengers. It is revealed after the fact that he flew to Hawaii to be with a mistress. Andy dies while trying to escape the plane in a SEIE suit.

Jasmine Harris is a bartender who cannot swim. She affixes life vests to herself obsessively. She provides moments of comic relief and mixes drinks during a particularly bleak moment for the passengers. The group bonds over teaching Jasmine to swim.

Ruth and Ira are an elderly couple that came to Hawaii for “one last adventure together” after Ruth received a terminal cancer diagnosis (286). Ruth is sweet, calm, and amicable, while Ira is described as a “grumpy old man” (176). Ira dies after being electrocuted by a live wire, and Ruth decides to stay behind with him.

Ryan Wang is a young newlywed whose wife is killed in the crash. He goes into a state of shock in the immediate aftermath.

Molly Hernandez is a flight attendant who is helpful and cooperative and takes her duties seriously.

Kaholo Kapule is a flight attendant and a Hawaiian native, and he loses his fingertips early in the story. He is helpful and cooperative, risking his own safety to use the SEIE suit and judge its safety for the others. He successfully escapes.

Bernadette Kowalski is a nurse who immediately steps in to help when she sees someone injured. Her expertise comes in handy on more than one occasion, such as when Shannon suffers an allergic reaction and Kaholo’s hand needs care.

Maia Taylor is an eight-year-old unaccompanied minor. She is left alone when her guardian, Ed, evacuates the plane. Everyone else on the plane steps up to take responsibility for her, including Shannon.

Chris’s team is a group of civilian divers who, at the start of the story, are performing routine hull maintenance on a Navy ship. The team consists of Noah Murphy, Peter Feeny, and Sayid Raval and is described as a “family”—Chris and her colleagues are close-knit. Their loyalty to and confidence in Chris underscore her competence even though she has no rescue experience. At the climax, Noah and Sayid risk their lives to rescue Chris, as she is the core of their team. Despite the conflict with the professional rescuers, the success of this team’s plan underscores Everyday People in the Role of Heroes.