A six-hour flight, a love story, and a song written in real time.

Every great pop song has a story. Few have one this cinematic. “Jelena” is a true story, written in the air — on a WestJet flight from Abbotsford, British Columbia to Toronto, in 2010, while the story it tells was still happening. It plays like a film treatment: a meet-cute at cruising altitude, a six-hour spark, and a twist at the arrivals gate that no screenwriter would dare invent.

The opening scene writes itself. Franklin McKay boards the flight heading back east and finds himself sitting next to Jelena. “I met her on the airplane,” he sings. “I was heading back east, and she jumped in my game.” The chemistry and the conversation are immediate — the kind of connection that makes hours feel like minutes. “I never imagined I’d feel the way I did. 6 short hours was all that it took.” She flashes him her smile, then she gives him her look.

And here is the part that makes the story extraordinary — the part that separates a good song from a great one. He is writing the song as it happens. Right there in his seat, on his MacBook with a 25-key controller, the melody and the moment are unfolding together, life and lyric in the same breath. It is the rarest thing in songwriting: a song composed in real time, about the very hours it was born in.

Then the third act arrives, and it is pure cinema. At the airport, as they wait for luggage, she takes out her phone, asks for his number, then asks him to go — “How bout tonight, you and I, we share some time.” But as they walk through the gate, he can’t believe what he sees: someone is there waiting for him. That “someone” is a quiet nod to his other song, “Someone” — one of the hidden connectors running through his music. Jelena looks in his eyes, then whispers sadly, “see you later.”

That is the whole film in one line: she was the perfect girl at the wrong time. “I wish I could go back and change my mind. Somehow I knew that she was the one. I wish I didn’t leave, I wish I didn’t run.” And like any great romantic drama, it ends not with a door closing, but with a hope that refuses to let go: “I know that you’re out there, somewhere tonight. I hope we meet again and make things right. I’m calling Jelena, can’t you see?” Franklin McKay wrote it — a true story, © 2010.

If you love Robbie Williams or Phil Collins, this one’s for you.