Passenger List · Passenger List and Radiotopia

2.1 Class Action

May 10, 2021·33 min·2 clips

A father at a church meeting presents a video of his son — who was supposedly killed on Flight 702 — showing a recently healed surgical scar that proves he had an operation months after the crash.

Season 2 opens with news coverage of wreckage from Flight 702 found in the North Atlantic, six months after the plane disappeared. Fishermen describe pulling up debris. Investigators discuss explosion evidence along the tail fins. A brief Radiotopia ad for Suburban Paradise interrupts before the drama resumes. Rory Murray, an aviation lawyer at the firm Murray & Wexler in New York, has been attempting to reach the Lay family. He leaves a professional, persistent voicemail offering to represent them in a negligence case against the airline. Mrs. Lay returns the call but is guarded, having been approached by many lawyers. Rory distinguishes himself by revealing he used to work for airlines and knows what they hide. He reveals he knows about Caitlin Lay. Mrs. Lay reveals that Caitlin dropped out of psychology studies at Vassar College, depleted her savings traveling to meet other families affected by 702, and recorded every conversation and interview. Now she is gone. Her parents do not know where the recordings are. Rory gets a fragmented second call from another Lay family member who dismisses him angrily. Rory's assistant traces Caitlin's movements: her phone was abandoned in a Miami taxi, she missed a return flight to New York. He identifies the airline's former bereavement officer Jennifer Wong as a potential source. In a lunch meeting, Rory interviews Jennifer, who recently left Atlantic after the airline outsourced family support. She describes her role as providing certainty to grieving families — confirming deaths, managing emotional needs. Rory presses her on whether she was used to get families to sign NDAs and push the bird strike narrative. Jennifer deflects and refuses to name individual clients but confirms Caitlin had been visiting and recording family members before going missing. She points Rory to a Facebook support group run by a man named Jim Travis. At the church group meeting, Rory encounters a range of grieving relatives — some rational, some lost in grief. A Spanish-speaking father named Mr. Mori tells Rory his daughter Monica was cabin crew and contacted him after the crash to say she was safe but could not come home. Another father presents a video found online that he believes shows his son Lucas alive, pointing to a healed surgical scar on the boy's foot that proves a procedure occurred at least two months after the plane disappeared. Jim Travis runs the group as a safe space and confirms Caitlin had visited several weeks earlier before failing to show up for a planned meeting. He says she was traveling to Miami to see the brother of a doctor who was on the flight. Rory eventually finds the doctor's brother, Hassan Aziz, who confirms Caitlin visited him and left a message the following day to thank him — the last known contact before she disappeared. The episode closes with Rory's colleague Petra delivering a surprise settlement offer from Atlantic Airlines, framed around the bomb theory. Rory refuses, declaring his clients want truth and an admission of culpability, not just compensation.

As heard by us

A grim follow-up that keeps the Flight 702 fallout tied to Caitlin Lay's disappearance.

Passenger List keeps the Flight 702 material in a tight grip, moving from a panicked call to a car that may be tailing someone, then into a recorded interview where the answers stay carefully measured.

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Why you'd press play

You want a missing-flight mystery that shifts from urgent calls to the investigation and family fallout around Flight 702.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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