One Past Midnight: The Langoliers by Stephen King

A group of travelers on a red-eye flight from California to Maine wake up to discover that most of their fellow passengers have vanished mid-flight, along with the pilots and flight attendants.
([source][1])

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Also contained in:

- [Four Past Midnight][2]
- [The Langoliers / Secret Window, Secret Garden][3]

[1]: https://stephenking.com/library/novella/langoliers_the.html
[2]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL81606W/Four_Past_Midnight
[3]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL149142W/The_Langoliers_Secret_Window_Secret_Garden

Though not quite rivalling the nostaligc value of catching this star-studded film (http://imdb.com/title/tt0112040/) on late night TV -and staying up until 2:30 in the morning with my mom because, dammit, we invested 3 hours already, and we're going to finish watching it- the book is frightening enough to make me like traveling by air even less. Though my chief fear in the realm of non-ground transport will still be sitting next to a particularly large and/or smelly individual, flying through aurora borealis and inadvertantly landing in Yesterday, just before it get's eaten by creatures resembling Mario's chain-chomps is certainly the #2 fear now.