Hotel manager Lisa Reisert arrives at Dallas Love Field to take a red-eye flight back to Miami, Florida. She meets a handsome young man named Jackson Rippner, also traveling to Miami. While waiting to board, they share a drink at the airport bar and engage in small talk.Lisa is surprised to find that Jackson is seated beside her.Red Eye 2005.
After takeoff, Jackson’s charming demeanor quickly turns sinister as he informs Lisa that he works for a domestic terrorist organization planning to assassinate Charles Keefe, the current United States Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. Lisa’s managerial position at the Lux Atlantic Hotel in Miami, where Keefe and his family are staying, is crucial to their plot. As Acting Manager, Lisa must make a call from the in-flight phone to order the Keefe family be moved to a targeted room where a missile launched from a boat in the harbor will strike. Her non-compliance will result in Jackson’s hitman accomplice killing Lisa’s father, Joe.While Jackson is distracted, Lisa writes a warning inside the self-help book she had previously given away to a friendly fellow-passenger. Jackson head-butts Lisa unconscious and retrieves the book before the woman reads the message. She revives half an hour later and is forced to make the call to the hotel. When a storm disrupts the sky phone service mid-conversation with her co-worker, Cynthia, Lisa pretends to be ordering the room change until Jackson catches on. She then persuades Jackson to let her use the restroom while the phone service is still disrupted. Lisa writes a fake bomb threat in soap on the mirror; Jackson, checking on her, sees it and angrily wipes it off, then roughs her up in the restroom. A young girl waiting outside becomes suspicious and tells the flight attendant that Jackson is inside with Lisa, but it is dismissed as a sexual escapade.