Samantha Maris has been having some really lousy luck trying to get home from college for Christmas. She had finals on the 23rd, so she booked a flight home on Christmas Eve, and then that flight got cancelled, so now she's flying home on Christmas Day itself. Except it's not even Christmas Day, it's late at night on December 25th. She's one of under a dozen people on this plane including the flight crew.
When they're about fifty miles outside of Pittsburgh, the plane gets struck by lightning. The plane is a Faraday cage; most of the inhabitants are startled but fine. One of them is missing.