Picture this. You’re on a plane, flying from Vancouver, B.C. to Sydney, Australia.

You’re flying over the Pacific Ocean. For the last 12 hours, your flight has been perfectly uneventful.

And then suddenly the captain’s voice comes over the plane’s speakers.

There is a boat in distress, the captain explains. And the plane is going to change course in order to help look for it.

That’s exactly what happened to 270 passengers on board Air Canada flight AC033 last Monday.

The captain was told there was a “vessel in distress” somewhere in the Tasman Sea, which is between Australia and New Zealand.

A yacht with one person aboard had left Sydney, Australia, about two weeks earlier. It had lost its mast, was very low on fuel and had been drifting.