In late 1955, Arthur Hailey, an advertising executive for a tractor-trailer company, was returning home to Toronto from a business trip in Vancouver. Aboard a Canadair North Star—among the largest passenger carriers at the time—his mind began to wander. He wondered whether someone like him, who'd flown planes for the Royal Air Force but hadn't been in a pilot's seat since the end of the war, could fly and land this four-engine Trans-Canada Air Lines airliner if catastrophe hit. He began imagining those circumstances.