On December 24, 1994 in Algiers, an Air France Airbus A300 carrying 227 passengers was hijacked by four armed Islamic terrorists. Based on this event, which unfurled over three days, the film follows in detail how four members of the GIA (Armed Islamic Group) infiltrated the plane on the ground in Algiers, holding over 200 persons hostage before forcing it to take off and land at an airport in a suburb of Marseilles. There, a French special forces unit engaged in a Wild West-style assault on the aircraft, killing the captors and liberating the passengers and crew.