The first portion of the story takes place on a fictitious airplane (IIRC, it was a sorta futuristic overgrown 747).
The protagonist is a company pilot who’s riding as a passenger to his destination. The plane suffers a catastrophic decompression while protagonist is in the john. The author produces a situation where the acting pilots’ backup air supply fails after they’ve instructed the autopilot to descend (I forget the details).
Due to some problem, the plane descends more slowly than desired and the pax and pilots are oxygen-deprived to such an extent that they are all rendered drooling and incoherent. Meanwhile, due to the inward opening-nature of the bathroom door, our hero has had enough air to avoid brain damage (the remaining pressure in the bathroom kept the door shut). When he awakens, he finds himself in a slowly descending, unpiloted airplane full of dangerous zombies. The story continues with him trying to evade 500 unpredictable and frequently violent people as he makes his way to the front in hopes of gaining control (before hitting the ground).
I read this a looong time ago; And it’s quite possible I have a lot of the details either wrong, or maybe confused with other novels. But does anybody remember reading a book similar to this? I’d like to find it again and finish it. I has no idea of the book, or the author’s name.
I read it a couple of years ago, and seem to remember that the authors said in the intro that what I was reading was a new, updated version of the book they wrote twenty years ago.
it was originally written in 1979 by Thomas Block. In 1998 Nelson DeMille rewrote it, and the new version was published as being by both authors. A TV movie was made of it in 2005. It’s described as a thriller rather than as science fiction.