Losing track of a child is bad enough, but the problem is compounded if it happens at 30,000 feet in the air. Throw in terrorists, a plane hijacking and a conspiracy, and you get “Flightplan.”

Jodie Foster’s latest movie has her playing Kyle Pratt, a propulsion engineer in Berlin who is returning to the United States with her daughter. After her husband mysteriously falls from the roof of her house, she and 6-year-old Julia are bringing his body back to be buried in New York City.

On the flight home, Pratt falls asleep, then wakes up to find Julia missing. Her blanket and teddy bear are there, but the crew denies ever seeing her, and official records say she died with her father.

After searching the enormous double-decker plane, Pratt frantically employs the crew and captain in a mission to open every nook and cranny of the aircraft. With no flight record or trace of Julia’s presence on the plane, everyone, including an air marshal played by Peter Sarsgaard, can only conclude she’s insane, leaving her to battle the evidence by herself. Eventually, she comes to the conclusion Julia was kidnapped as part of a conspiracy to hijack the plane. Since Pratt helped design the plane, the would-be hijackers want to make sure they keep her out of the way.

“Flightplan” is a typical thriller that employs the use of a closed space. Either Julia was never on the plane and Pratt is delusional, or she is telling the truth and Julia has indeed been kidnapped. If the second is true, the culprit must still be on the plane, because there’s no way he or she could leave.

This seems logical for a story in principle, but it should raise some questions in the viewers’ minds. Although “Flightplan” is a good way to spend an hour and a half in suspense, the plot leaves a few gaping holes, which heightens its implausibility.

Even though Pratt helped design the plane, how does she know the technology of it? She should know her way around the aircraft, but should she really know how to play with the oxygen masks, lights and engine?

If Pratt is not deluded in thinking she is the target of an elaborate kidnapping and hijacking scheme, how could the criminals control which flight she would take? It makes the viewer wonder how they could plan a scheme that hinged on a very shaky point.

Much like a flight that experiences some turbulence, “Flightplan” delivers a thrilling and anxiety-filled story that runs into some major bumps en route to its final destination.