Dinah hears an approaching and threatening sound, and the group agrees to leave before it arrives. As all products and substances have lost their quality, fuel does not burn, thus preventing any further flight. The clocks have stopped, there is no electricity, and the environment seems generally lifeless. Upon arrival, they find the airport deserted.

Brian manages to land in Bangor, Maine despite furious protests from Craig, who insists on reaching Boston for an important conference that will decide his fate. Brian takes control of the plane, but is unable to make any outside contact, and the passengers can only see a dark void below the plane. The passengers find that the crew and the passengers who were awake have disappeared, leaving the airliner under the control of the autopilot. Dinah, mistaking a wig for a scalp, screams and awakes Brian and nine other passengers: teacher Laurel Stevenson, English diplomat Nick Hopewell, writer Bob Jenkins, violinist Albert Kaussner, and recovering addict Bethany Simms, businessman Rudy Warwick, mechanic Don Gaffney, bank manager Craig Toomy and an unknown heavily intoxicated passenger. Dinah Bellman, a young blind girl with psychic abilities, also falls asleep, and awakes to find that her aunt and several other passengers have disappeared. Brian falls asleep during takeoff, having been awake throughout his previous flight. A flight attendant speaks of an unusual phenomenon over the Mojave Desert that resembles an aurora.

Pilot Brian Engle, immediately after a difficult flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles, learns that his ex-wife Anne has died in an accident in Boston, and he boards a red-eye flight to Boston as a passenger. Wikiquote has quotations related to Four Past Midnight.

Four past midnight review