Unfriendly Skies

"Unfriendly Skies"

"Unfriendly Skies" is the ninth episode of the American crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation which is set in Las Vegas, Nevada. It originally aired as Episode 9 of Season 1 on December 8, 2000.

The plot parallels an event of four months earlier when 19-year-old Las Vegas resident Jonathan Burton stormed the cockpit door of Southwest Airlines Flight 1763 from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City on August 11, 2000. He was subdued by eight other passengers with such force that he died of asphyxiation.

Plot

An airplane lands at McCarran International Airport; a first-class passenger, Tony Candlewell, died on the flight. Preliminary interviews reveal that he had a panic attack and died before landing. Grissom and Brass inspect the airplane and see many signs of disturbance, including a shattered wine bottle, a broken beverage cart, and a bloody handprint and shoe impressions on the cockpit door. They then inspect the body, which is lying between rows 1 and 2.

At the morgue, Nick learns that Candlewell had a fever when he died. The coroner also finds scraped knuckles and a broken hand, indicating aggression, as well as defensive wounds and shoe impressions on his neck and back.

Grissom and Sara use the passenger manifest to determine where each of the passengers was seated. They discover that seat 2C is broken and keeps flopping into 3C – they realize that Candlewell sat in 3C. Brass, Catherine, and Warrick interview Nate Metz, who sat in 2C, and he complains that Candlewell kept kicking the back of his seat.

Grissom and Sara find blood drops on seat 4B, where Lou Everett sat. Everett says that Candlewell’s kicking knocked Metz’s laptop to the floor, causing Metz to confront him. Everett tried to break up the fight and was cut in the process.

Shannon, the flight attendant, notes that Candlewell had been complaining of a headache, and that shortly after takeoff, he became extremely agitated.

Sara finds a broken neck bottle with blood on it in the seat pocket belonging to Marlene Valdez. Marlene says that Candlewell knocked over the wine on the beverage cart. Grissom speculates with Sara that Marlene actually slashed Candlewell with the bottle.

Further examination of Candlewell’s body shows massive internal injuries. The CSIs begin to suspect that the witnesses are lying.

Grissom and Sara find fiber from Candlewell’s pants in the aisle, and Greg finds many shoeprints on the back of Candlewell’s jacket. The CSIs collect all of the witnesses’ shoes and discover that the shoeprints belong to Everett, Max Valdez, and Dr. Kiera Berhle.

Catherine interviews Dr. Behrle, who says that she saw Candlewell pass out, used her feet as leverage to roll him over, and gave him CPR to no avail. However, Grissom and Sara find an unused defibrillator on the plane.

Grissom questions Mr. Cash, who sat in 1A. Although he is legally blind and thus, could not see anything, he says that he heard several people trying to subdue Candlewell at once.

The coroner finds that Candlewell’s brain was swollen and realizes that he had undiagnosed encephalitis. Changes in altitude and air pressure caused his brain to swell, leading to headache and altered behavior.

The CSIs realize that the physical evidence gathered by Grissom, Sara, and Nick contradicts the anecdotal evidence collected by Brass, Catherine and Warrick, so they gather in the plane and recreate the scene. They reconstruct the timeline of the incident: Candlewell, whose brain was swelling, started kicking Metz’s seat. Metz stood up and Everett joined him. Marlene pushed Max into joining the fray, and Candlewell shoved Max into the beverage cart, so Marlene slashed Candlewell with the wine bottle. Candlewell ran towards the cockpit, and when he could not open it, ran towards the exit door. The other passengers, terrified that the door would open, mobbed Candlewell and forced him to the ground.

The CSIs are satisfied with this chain of events until Sara points out that Candlewell’s body was not found by the exit, but rather, near his seat. They realize that Candlewell tried to escape, but the passengers were overtaken by a mob mentality and kicked him to death.

Grissom explains the evidence to the Undersheriff, but he refuses to charge anybody, saying that the passengers acted out of self-preservation. The CSIs return to the lab and each reacts differently to this announcement; some are angry that the mob evaded justice while others try to understand the panic behind their actions.

The plot has many similarities with Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express: the investigation is forced to happen quickly, there are many suspects, all of whom were passengers with the victim, it turns out that multiple passengers were guilty, and in the end, nobody gets charged.

Trivia

The idea of this episode is similar to that of Turbulence, a CSI: NY episode in which a murder is committed on a plane and the CSI team has only 24 hours before all the passengers and crew are released.

See also

• List of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episodes

External links

• "Unfriendly Skies" at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com episode
• "Unfriendly Skies" at CSI Guide.com
• "Unfriendly Skies" at CSI Files