On her third attempt ever, right seat passenger ûends right on the money and without a bounce.

Tucked in the darkest recesses of every passenger’s closet full of nightmares is the nagging worry that the pilot will somehow become incapacitated, leading the flight to doom and destruction on an impossibly personal scale.

The cold, hard numbers show that pilot incapacitation – at least as it’s reported – is an extremely rare event. But aviation is a world where fantasy often takes hold, and wild imaginations can conjure up all sorts of scenarios – ranging from food poisoning after a $100 hamburger run to a heart attack during an instrument approach. …