The odds of that happening are one million to one," he said.
Not so sure about those odds.
.
It was probably smart of the F/O to get some other "hands" up front. If they'd been an overnighting holiday charter crew who'd had a good curry together in Alicante or Puerto Grosso or Mukkinsville, it would've been almost "de rigor". And that would've been particularly so if the captain had been upchucking before losing consciousness.
.
But having said that, it wouldn't take a real brains trust terreotype to deviously place some incapacitating food additive in a flight crew's alimentary canals that would take effect some hours later (after takeoff and down-route). I hope the average SOP has a paragraph on that subject.
.
There's delayed acting, slow-acting and deferred action poisons that can put you out of the picture so fast that no-one would know that both pilots were incapacitated on the other side of that locked cockpit door until the top of drop was well overdue.
.
Food for thought. Food for Death.