Missing in Flight Review: A Baby Vanishes at 35,000 Feet, and the Plane Can't Land

The locked-room mystery has a long, well-worn history, but Missing in Flight finds a genuinely fresh version of it: a sealed aircraft cruising at thirty thousand feet, no doors to slip through, no ground to disappear into, and a missing infant who, by every law of physics, should still be somewhere on that plane. Audrey J. Cole builds an entire thriller around the specific, claustrophobic horror of that premise, and for most of its length, the confined setting does exactly the work it's supposed to.

I went into "Missing in Flight" expecting a fairly straightforward missing-child thriller with an airplane serving as an unusual backdrop. What I found was a book that takes its setting seriously as a structural constraint rather than just a gimmick, using the sealed cabin to generate real procedural tension before the plot's later revelations ask for more suspension of disbelief than the airtight setup initially promised.

In this review, I'll walk through Makayla Rossi's flight from Anchorage to New York and the impossible disappearance of her infant son, Liam, how the book splits its attention between the crisis in the air and her husband Jack's parallel ordeal on the ground, the suspicion that mounts against Makayla herself once no one on the plane recalls seeing her with a baby, and where the eventual resolution asks the reader to accept more coincidence and spectacle than the story's grounded opening chapters prepare you for. I'll also talk about the author's background, because it shows up in exactly the right places.

Overview: What Missing in Flight Is About

"Missing in Flight" follows Makayla Rossi, traveling alone with her three-month-old son, Liam, on a long flight from Anchorage to New York. Needing a few minutes to use the restroom, she asks the passenger in the neighboring seat to keep an eye on her sleeping son. When she returns, Liam is gone, and despite an immediate, thorough search of the cabin by flight crew and passengers alike, there's no trace of him anywhere on a sealed aircraft at cruising altitude. The situation escalates fast: no exits, no way down, and, disturbingly, no one on the plane who actually remembers seeing Makayla board with a baby at all.

That last detail turns the crisis into something more layered than a straightforward search-and-rescue. As the flight crew and eventually the FBI, represented by analyst Tina Farrar working the case from the ground, scramble to figure out what actually happened, suspicion starts creeping toward Makayla herself. Meanwhile, her husband, Jack, a Forbes-featured banker back on solid ground, is living through his own parallel nightmare, forced to process the crisis from a distance while facing complications of his own that the book slowly reveals are more connected to Liam's disappearance than they initially appear.

The Locked-Room Premise: A Genuinely Effective Hook

The strongest sustained stretch of "Missing in Flight" is exactly what the premise promises: the specific, mounting dread of a search that has nowhere left to expand. Cole clearly understands what makes this setting different from a typical missing-child thriller, there's no city to canvass, no surrounding neighborhood to search, just a fixed, enclosed space and a ticking clock until the plane has to land somewhere. That constraint generates real, sustained tension, and the book's procedural detail around how a flight crew would actually respond to a crisis like this adds a layer of grounded authenticity that keeps the early chapters feeling plausible even as the situation itself remains genuinely impossible.

Reviewers have specifically praised how authentic the crew's response feels, tension built through procedure rather than melodrama, and that's an accurate read of what makes the opening half of the book work as well as it does. Cole isn't relying purely on shock value to generate suspense; she's building it out of the specific, believable mechanics of an airline crisis unfolding in real time.

Makayla Under Suspicion: A Smart Psychological Turn

The choice to have no one on the plane recall seeing Makayla with a baby is the book's smartest structural decision, immediately complicating what could have been a simple villain-hunt with a genuinely unsettling psychological question: is Makayla telling the truth, and if she is, why does no one believe her? That uncertainty taps into real, culturally resonant anxieties about how quickly mothers in crisis get disbelieved or pathologized, and the book uses it effectively to keep both the other characters and the reader genuinely off-balance about what's actually happening.

The novel's interest in past trauma shaping how Makayla is perceived, and how she perceives herself, adds real psychological depth to what could have stayed a pure plot mechanism. It's not just that people doubt her; the book is interested in why that doubt takes hold so easily, and what it says about how the people around a mother in crisis default to skepticism rather than support.

Jack's Ground-Level Ordeal and the FBI Procedural Thread

Running in parallel with Makayla's crisis in the air is Jack's storyline on the ground, and the multi-perspective structure gives the book real narrative range beyond what could have been a single-location bottle episode. Jack's parallel complications, which the book reveals are more entangled with Liam's disappearance than a simple worried-husband subplot would suggest, add a second layer of suspense running alongside the aircraft mystery, and Tina Farrar's FBI investigative work grounds the resolution in real procedural detail rather than convenient coincidence alone.

Cole's rendering of the FBI's involvement has been specifically praised as well-researched, and that attention to procedural accuracy extends the aviation authenticity of the in-flight chapters into the ground-based investigation as well, giving the book a consistent commitment to grounded detail even as its plot escalates toward more sensational territory.

Where the Resolution Strains Credibility

I'd be underselling this review if I didn't address where "Missing in Flight" asks considerably more of its reader's patience than its tightly controlled opening chapters prepare you for. Without fully spoiling the specifics, the resolution involves a kidnapping plot considerably more elaborate than the sealed-cabin premise initially suggests, involving fellow passengers operating under false identities and an escape method dramatic enough that multiple readers have flagged it as genuinely far-fetched. One reader specifically subtracted a star over an ending they found "pretty far-fetched and extreme," and that's a fair, representative reaction; the book's commitment to grounded procedural realism in its first half makes the escalating spectacle of its resolution land as a tonal shift rather than a natural culmination.

The coincidental timing required to make the full plot work, kidnapping, mechanical complications, weather, and a dramatic escape all converging within the same tight window, stretches credibility in ways that several reviewers have noted honestly while still finding the overall ride worth taking. Secondary character motivations, particularly among the plot's antagonists, also remain thinner than the meticulous setup deserves, functioning more to serve the escalating plot than to feel like fully realized people with believable reasons for what they're doing.

Audrey J. Cole's Craft: Authenticity Where It Counts

None of that undercuts what Cole does well here. Her aviation details carry real specificity, reportedly drawing on a pilot family background, and that authenticity gives the in-flight chapters a lived-in credibility that a lot of airborne thrillers don't bother earning. Cole, a USA Today bestselling author who spent eleven years as a neonatal intensive care nurse before writing full time, brings genuine, hard-won expertise to how she renders infant care and parental crisis, and that background shows up clearly in how convincingly Makayla's panic and instinct are rendered throughout.

Her prose stays crisp and efficient throughout, well-suited to a thriller built on urgency, and her handling of multiple timelines and perspectives, the plane, the ground, the unfolding investigation, is genuinely well-paced even where the plot itself starts to strain.

How Missing in Flight Fits Into the Genre

Readers drawn to high-concept, confined-setting thrillers, planes, elevators, single houses under siege, will recognize the appeal of Cole's central premise here, and "Missing in Flight" distinguishes itself within that subgenre by grounding its impossible crisis in genuine procedural and medical authenticity rather than relying purely on the confined setting's inherent tension. It's a book more interested in how real institutions, airlines, the FBI, actually respond to a crisis like this than in simply exploiting the claustrophobia of the setup, even as its eventual plot mechanics ask the reader to accept more than that grounded approach initially promises.

About Author Audrey J. Cole

Audrey J. Cole is a USA Today bestselling author of eleven novels whose background as a neonatal intensive care nurse for eleven years gives her a genuine, specific authority when writing about infant care and parental crisis that a lot of thriller writers working in similar territory simply can't match. "Missing in Flight," published by Thomas & Mercer in March 2025, showcases that authenticity clearly, and it's become her most popular book by a wide margin, reflecting real reader enthusiasm for the specific, high-concept premise even amid mixed feelings about its resolution.

Critical Reception and Reader Response

"Missing in Flight" holds a 4.04-star average across an enormous 81,000-plus Goodreads ratings and more than 6,700 written reviews, making it a genuinely major hit within the psychological thriller space. Readers have consistently praised the authentic aviation and crew procedural detail, the effective use of unreliable narration and multiple perspectives to sustain doubt, and the emotionally resonant portrayal of parental instinct and trauma, with several reviewers specifically noting they stayed up late to finish it despite reservations about individual plot elements.

The criticism that surfaces most consistently centers on the ending: the resolution's reliance on elaborate coincidence and dramatic spectacle draws fair, repeated pushback, with reviewers describing it as requiring real suspension of disbelief even while acknowledging the overall ride remained exciting. Secondary antagonist motivations were flagged as underdeveloped relative to the meticulous setup, and a portion of the book's massive readership has landed on "great premise, shakier landing" as a fair overall summary.

Key Takeaways from Missing in Flight

The locked-room premise is genuinely effective. A sealed aircraft with nowhere for a missing infant to go generates real, sustained procedural tension in the book's first half.

Makayla's disbelieved crisis taps into something real. No one recalling seeing her with a baby raises genuinely unsettling questions about how quickly mothers in crisis get doubted.

Jack's parallel ground storyline adds real range. The multi-perspective structure keeps the book from feeling confined to a single bottle-episode setting.

The resolution asks for real suspension of disbelief. An elaborate kidnapping plot and dramatic escape stretch credibility well past what the grounded opening chapters establish.

Cole's professional background shows up in exactly the right places. Aviation authenticity and genuine NICU-nurse expertise in infant care give the book real, specific credibility.

Conclusion: Is Missing in Flight Worth Reading?

"Missing in Flight" delivers a genuinely gripping first half built on one of the more effective locked-room premises in recent psychological thriller fiction, a sealed aircraft, an impossible disappearance, and a mother whose crisis nobody quite believes. Audrey J. Cole's aviation and medical authenticity give the book real credibility, and the multi-perspective structure balancing Makayla's ordeal in the air against Jack's parallel crisis on the ground keeps the pacing genuinely propulsive throughout.

Where it strains is in the landing: the resolution asks for more coincidence and spectacle than the tightly controlled setup promises, and readers who prize plausibility all the way through may find the final stretch a real letdown after such a grounded beginning. But as a high-concept thriller that mostly earns its premise and keeps you reading well past the point you meant to stop, "Missing in Flight" delivers exactly the kind of pulse-pounding ride its massive readership has responded to. You can pick up a copy of "Missing in Flight" on Amazon and see whether Makayla's impossible search pays off for you the way it did for most of its readers.