Flight 49 brings family members and friends of passengers together when their worst nightmare becomes reality and the plane with their loved ones crashes. Stone follows the relatives but also introduces the public to the victims in flashbacks. A kaleidoscopic journey takes place in the lives of dozens of men, women and children. In the last part, the relatives find each other again during a national memorial.

Stone shows how people in 2020 are fighting with fate and trying to contain anger and desperation. But he also shows moments of empathy, comfort and resilience. Recognition of what unites us all: a need for love and life as an exercise in parting. He himself calls his piece "a catalog of grief": a fragmented story in which the fragments of lives are put together in the hope of creating meaning from loss and chaos.