X-Traction

"We have them." Nightcrawler was safely on board the Blackbird and updating status not just to Cyclops but also to Jean on the comms. "I have the conn if you want to do something about that." Kurt indicated that the plane had taken a nosedive! "I can bring our people back but won't be able to save everyone on board."

"Oops!"

Jubilee scrambles to pick up the yoke and stick it back in. That is, if she can stay upright.

Wolverine gets clipped by the shifting pallet and his feet get knocked out from under him. The rest manage to stay on their feet. Jubilee grabs the broken yoke and realizes that the bolts holding the yoke in place have snapped and it is unfixable in the few minutes remaining before the airplane crashes to the ground!

"Really? You guys have enough money to make a gazillion Sentinels, but not for equipment that isn't junk?"

Jubilee tosses the yoke to the ground and begins scanning the controls for alternate ways to level out the plane's fall.

"Autopilot...autopilot...here?"

Never having taken piloting classes, Jubilee looks around at the literally hundreds of toggles, switches, buttons, and levers and has no idea what autopilot looks like or how it works.

"Jubilee," Cyclops says over comms. "You need to (some words about engaging an autopilot that are general and likely not specific to this plane)."

Jubilee blinks at Cyclop's technical explanation.

"...What? Nevermind, let's get a second opinion."

Reaching over, Jubilee hefts up the pilot and plops him back in the seat.

"Okay, so, big ask, but can you bail us out here? I know you don't like us for being mutants and all that, but don't you have something to come home to? Family, friends, pets?"

As the rest of the X-Men focus on preventing the plane from crashing, Gambit makes sure to stay out of the way of the full cockpit. He notices a nearby mook sliding past and checks to see if they have any parachutes or devices to help them escape the plane safely. He also looks to see if there are any identifiers that can help them figure out who this plane belongs to or what these people wanted.

The pilot recoils as Jubilee manhandles him. "Don't touch me! Fine, I'll do it." She presses a button that looks like any other to Jubilee and the plane rights itself. "This won't last forever. We can't land without a yoke so we'll just keep flying until we run out of fuel or crash into something."

"Do we want to bring everyone over?" Kurt suggested.

Worry crosses Jubilee's brow.

"Do you have enough 'bamf' juice in the tank there? I mean, we're going to be coasting to our destination anyways."

Jubilee eyes the pilot.

"...That's how autopilot works, right?"

"I'm still fresh!"

Wolverine towers over the pilot, not liking the lip he’s giving one bit.

"Ask nice, and we might bring you with us." he says, wondering how they would extract all these ‘innocents’ off the airplane.

Innocents… insofar as the news coverage after all this was done was concerned anyway…

Searching around the cargo hold, Gambit finds a parachute under each seat that is bolted to the wall. Nightcrawler looks around and counts twelve Friends of Humanity members. That's not good.

The pilot looks at Jubilee but refuses to answer.

"Cyclops, you there?" Logan speaks into his presumed headset. "Can you get our bird under this hunk of junk and guide it down slow?"