When a group of the most dangerous and notorious prisoners in the U.S. penal system are transferred to a new super-maximum security facility, the recently paroled Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) hitches a ride on the Con Air transportation flight. Anxious to see his wife Tricia (Monica Potter) — after serving a sentence for unintentionally killing a man who had harassed her — and striving to be home for the birthday of their 8-year-old daughter whom he’s never met, Poe suddenly finds himself embroiled in a meticulously planned mid-air skyjacking masterminded by Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom (John Malkovich).

On the ground, U.S. Marshal Vince Larkin (John Cusack) faces impossible odds as he tries to avert the takeover and, at the same time, keep his overzealous superiors from blowing the aircraft and its passengers into oblivion. Poe becomes a reluctant hero when, along with Larkin, he must fight to stop Cyrus and his band of savage, hardened “lifers” from massacring everyone on board as the damaged plane careens toward disaster on the famed Las Vegas strip.