The episode begins with a plane in the air which suddenly has a turbine explosion. We see it crashing in a water body and the scene cuts.

28 hours ago

A Man is seen buying poison from a shady place. He goes back home and transfers the poison into some vitamin pills and keeps them in his bag. In the next scene, we see him wearing his uniform. We learn that he is a pilot.

Cut to a new location, it looks like a residence of a south Indian family. We see a man called V. Krishnamurthy making plans to catch a flight to Australia. His wife and his children do not want him to go. Krishnamurthy says that this trip is important.

The next scene introduces us to another new character. We see Siddharth Singhaniya, a very savvy businessman. He is seen closing deals with ease and is portrayed to be very rich.

Another character, Sarah, is at a coffee shop and suspects her boyfriend is cheating on her when he acts suspiciously in a video call. She immediately books a flight to Australia to catch him red handed.

We now see the pilot in a taxi on his way to the airport. The taxi driver is asking him too many questions and the annoyance on the face of the pilot is clearly visible. When the driver asks him what might happen if both the pilots on a plane die. The pilot, though irritated, tells him that there is a third pilot on board.

Later, when the pilot sees an increase in security and army personnel at one of the airport terminals, he learns from an officer that the extra security was there for a surprise narcotics check.

We see the pilot get a little tense as his bags pass through the customs. His bag gets flagged off by an officer examining the luggage through X-ray. The pilot remains unfazed as an army official opens his bag. In the bag we see the same bottle of pills next to a swiss-knife. The army official immediately zeroes in on the swiss knife and asks the pilot how he could forget that these were banned on flights. The pilot breaks into a charming smile and says that it was an honest mistake and walks away with his bag.

In the flashback we see, suspecting a luggage check, the pilot had bought a swiss knife attached as a keychain from his taxi driver. He then kept it near his poison pills so that all attention would be directed to the knife.

Cut to Siddharth's chartered plane being delayed due to technical difficulties. He gets his colleague to book him a commercial flight. As he transfers to the commercial flight he sees Sarah arguing with an airline attendant who is not letting her board the plane since she is late. Siddharth, using his influence, gets Sarah to board the plane along with him. Sarah expresses her gratitude to Siddharth.

Now we see the pilot boarding the airplane. The air hostesses greets him and we learn that his name is Captain Karan. His co-pilot is Abhimanyu. The airhostess Parineeta gets both of them coffee. Karan thanks her and says he is grateful to her for everything. This confuses both Parineeta and Abhimanyu as Karan does not come off as a polite or grateful person. These lines might be a foreshadow to what he is planning. Karan does not plan to live much longer.

In the passenger’s section of the plane, Sarah is texting on her phone when she sees her friend's profile picture. She realises that the cropped picture has her boyfriend’s wounded finger on her friend's arm. Sarah learns that the woman her boyfriend was cheating with, was her own friend. Sarah sits in the aisle seat, which is next to Krishnamurthy. They break into a conversation on future and destiny when she learns that he is an astrologist.

Back in the cockpit, after the flight takes off, Karan empties one of the poison pills into his coffee and keeps it on his side. He then takes out a picture of his family and looks at it. Later, when Karan looks for his coffee, he is horrified to find Abhimanyu sipping on it. Ambhimanyu, not knowing the blunder he has done, asks Karan to take his coffee instead. Within seconds Abhimanyu starts feeling discomfort and asks Parineeta to get Captain Joe, the standby pilot, to switch with him. Parineeta takes Abhimanyu’s coffee cup away.

Parineeta then talks to Captain Joe. He is sleepy and says that he will go and check in the cockpit after a cup of coffee.

Back in the cockpit, Abhimanyu is dead. Karan closes off the cockpit entrance and doesn’t let Parineeta enter when she comes back to check in on the co-pilot. Karan knows that Captain Joe can control the plane even if he kills himself. He takes out his last remaining pill but suddenly due to turbulence it falls from his hands. He fails to retrieve it from the cockpit floor and loses it under all the technical equipment.

Giselle, another air hostess, had forgotten to give Captain Joe his coffee. When she is reminded by Parineeta, in a hurry she takes Abhimanyu’s cup, which was on the kitchen slab, to him.

The episode ends with Mumbai ATC division’s WSO Kiran Mirza being notified that mission control has lost contact with Skyline flight 502.

This episode is an amazing start to a suspense thriller. Arjun Rampal plays the role of Captain Karan extremely well. From Karan’s peculiar personality and rude behaviour we can tell he has a lot of backstory. Even though this was an establishing episode, as it notifies us of all the secondary characters, it has managed to kickstart the premise with a bang. I especially loved the scene where we see Karan with a sly grin as he manages to fool the customs with the swiss-knife trick.

I can’t help but watch the next episode as soon as possible.

Episode Rating 5/5