9 Mistakes In Stephen King Books You Never Even Noticed
3. The Langoliers - Matches Defy Logic
The Langoliers is a novella which is featured in Four Past Midnight, a collection of four novellas published in 1990. In The Langoliers, ten passengers awake on a cross-country flight from L.A. to Boston to find that the crew and the vast majority of the other passengers have disappeared. Pilot Brian Engle takes control of the plane and lands in Bangor, Maine, finding no signs of life at the airport.
During the story, Brian Engle notices that a man named Albert takes a packet of matches out of his jacket pocket. Just a couple pages later, however, King writes that Albert sets fire to all of the matches, burning them all up.
Again, not long after, the character Bethany - who is desperate for a cigarette - is given a match from one of Albert's stash. This takes place despite King desribeing how Albert specifically burned up all of the matches he had taken from Brian.