Here is a brief summary of the storyline on Wikipedia:
On October 14, 2011, Airline captain William "Whip" Whitaker (Denzel Washington) awakens in his Orlando hotel room with flight attendant Katerina Márquez (Nadine Velazquez) after a night of sex, alcohol, and very little sleep. After using cocaine to wake up, he boards SouthJet flight 227 to Atlanta. After Whip threads the plane through turbulence at takeoff, copilot Ken Evans (Brian Geraghty) flies the airplane while Whip discreetly mixes vodka in his orange juice and takes a nap. Whip is jolted awake just before their final descent and the aircraft goes into a steep dive as a result of an apparent catastrophic failure of control systems of the aircraft. With no other choice, Whip rolls the plane upside down to bring it out of the dive and maneuvers the plane right-side up just before crash-landing in a field. He loses consciousness upon impact.
Whip awakens in an Atlanta hospital with minor injuries. He is greeted by his old friend Charlie Anderson (Bruce Greenwood), who now represents the airline's pilots union. He tells Whip his heroism saved 96 of 102 people on board. A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) official informs him Katerina was among those killed, and that Evans has been put into a coma...
I won't go into too many details about how the story develops and ends since that would spoil the fun for those who haven't watched the film. The highlights of the film would definitely be the plane crash scene and the public NTSB hearing where Whip was being questioned about his role in the accident. If you've watched National Geographic's programmes such as "Seconds to Disaster" or "Air Crash Investigation", you would probably get the feel that these scenes seemed to be taken straight from these programmes. Very gripping as if you are in that plane and experiencing it first hand and it was horrifying especially to see the plane diving straight downwards and then flying upside down. Apparently, this part about the plane flying upside down was based on a true incident but in that plane crash, nobody survived.
The NTSB hearing was another engaging scene especially when Whip had to decide whether to save himself or taint the name of his girlfriend and lie to everyone again. It was plain that he was struggling emotionally and I think Denzel Washington did very well in this particular scene. I don't think he really loved his girlfriend that much because it felt more like a casual fling to me but when he was shown her photo and had to decide whether to lie through his teeth, I think that smiling image of hers made him realise that he just couldn't push the blame to her just to get away scot-free. To be honest, I had scant sympathy for his character Whip who was in denial about his alcoholism and thought that the plane crash was simply not his fault. Straight after the crash and being discharged from hospital, he did throw away all his alcohol but when he reverted to his old ways soon, I felt that he had no one to blame but himself for his state. True, his intoxicated state might not have caused the plane crash directly but being a pilot, he should know that he was duty-bound to be in a clear-minded condition to handle any emergencies.
I don't know if I was too tired due to the long work day or the middle of the movie was simply too slow-moving but I actually found myself dozing off several times. I think too much time was spent on describing his personal struggle with alcoholism. The movie would definitely benefit if that part was made a bit more succinct rather than having it overshadow the plane crash. On the surface, the title of the movie refers to the plane crash but I think that with the emphasis on Whip's journey to fight alcoholism, it seemed to suggest that the title was also in reference to how that flight changed Whip's life forever, be it in a good or bad way.
Just a side note though, the nudity scene in the beginning was a little uncalled for and too long. It probably didn't add much value to the story except to emphasize that the relationship Whip and Katerina had was probably built upon lust, booze and drugs.
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