I first saw the 1980 movie Airplane at the drive-in. I thought it was dumb, because I was more interested in the girl I was with. I’ve since re-watched about 30 times, and it’s in my top-5 movies of all time (World According to Garp, Wonderboys, American Beauty, O Brother Where Art Though round out the current list).

Whatever plot there was in Airplane revolved around passengers stricken with food poisoning.

That plot seems to have been borne out in real life after the pilot of a small plane fell ill at the controls and two flight instructors were called in to the airport to give his only passenger a crash course in not crashing.

The man—who had no flying experience—managed to bring the plane in for a safe, though somewhat bumpy, landing at England’s Humberside Airport. “He made quite a good landing actually,” one of the flight instructors tells the BBC.