Word: 10s
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...precise cause of the worst U.S. air tragedy in history-the crash of an American Airlines DC-10 jumbo jet near Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Memorial Day weekend that killed 275. While the experts hunted for both a cause and a cure, 138 DC-10s in the U.S. and 132 more around the world were grounded. As the airlines using DC-10s lost an estimated $5 million a day, the public developed new doubts about the industry's vaunted competence and, equally important, the ability of its federal regulators to protect travelers against disaster...
After vacillating for twelve days, Federal Aviation Administrator Langhorne Bond last week issued an "emergency order of suspension" that indefinitely lifted the design certificate of the DC-10s in the U.S. The grounding was voluntarily followed by all but one airline outside the U.S. (Venezuela's Viasa, which uses five DC-10s). A total of 41 airlines that normally carry 60,000 passengers a day on the $40 million plane built by the McDonnell Douglas Corp. had suddenly lost key portions of their fleets. The initial result was confusion and tedious delays in airport terminals as travelers scrambled...
...between the small parts and the ghastly consequences of their failure in the worst U.S. air disaster would have been troubling enough. But other events stemming from their discovery were also unsettling. The Federal Aviation Administration, the governing body of U.S. flight, quickly ordered inspections of all 138 DC-10s still flying for U.S. airlines. Ernest Gigliotti, 31, and Lorin Schluter, 39, two conscientious United Airlines mechanics, found metal filings as fine as dust on one DC-10 in Chicago. Suspicious, they did the natural thing: they shook the pylon. It was loose. The two men discovered 27 fasteners that...
...hours after learning of that discovery, the FAA grounded all DC-10s, the first time it had ever done so to a fleet of jetliners. The move immobilized 12% of the capacity of U.S. passenger planes and substantially disrupted air travel. By week's end ominous faults of various kinds -cracked plates, loose bolts-had turned up in the pylons of 36 of the inspected aircraft. After repair, one got back into the air, with FAA permission, joining 102 found to have no defects. But Philip Hogue, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board investigating the American crash...
That problem, which caused depressurization and buckling of the cabin, has been corrected. Last week it seemed tragically possible, however, that the engine problems have not been solved. There are more than 200 of the DC-10s in service...