Word: 727s
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...airplanes suffered the greatest damage. Of the 10 Iraqi Airways jets on the tarmac when the airport fell, a U.S. inspection in early May found that five were serviceable: three 727s, a 747 and a 737. Over the next few weeks, U.S. soldiers looking for comfortable seats and souvenirs ripped out many of the planes' fittings, slashed seats, damaged cockpit equipment and popped out every windshield. "It's unlikely any of the planes will fly again," says Welsh, a reservist who works for the aviation firm Pratt & Whitney as a quality-control liaison officer to Boeing...
...kingpins like Amado changed all that. He fancied himself the Bill Gates of Mexican drug traffickers--a visionary who earned the nickname "Lord of the Skies" for the multiton shipments of Colombian cocaine he received in Boeing 727s. When he died in 1997 after botched plastic surgery, DEA agents were skeptical that his brother Vicente would last as the successor head of the Juarez syndicate. But in Vicente's favor, says a U.S. agent, "he's vicious...
However pressured his life became, Carrillo died at the height of his power. Forging important alliances with Colombia's Cali drug cartel in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Carrillo pioneered the use of Boeing 727s and cargo aircraft to move tons of cocaine from South America to Mexico, where supplies were then shipped and trucked across the U.S. border. More significant, Carrillo demanded that the Colombians pay him in white powder rather than cash. This allowed him to set up vast U.S. distribution networks of his own. With most of the Cali dons imprisoned since 1995, Carrillo had become...
...other jet by 4.1 nautical miles, well within the FAA regulation that requires two planes of such weights to maintain a separation of 3 nautical miles. If the 727 wake did jostle the 737 sufficiently to contribute to the latter's plunge, it would be a first. While 727s were the lead craft in seven of the 52 wake-vortex encounters documented by the NTSB from 1983 through 1993, all of those incidents -- some merely unsettling, some disastrous -- involved much lighter trailing aircraft...
Ironically, the industry's troubles have made it easier for new airlines to get into the business. With so many planes available owing to repossessions and canceled orders, fledgling airlines have been able to buy them at bargain- basement prices. Used Boeing 727s that cost up to $40 million new can now be bought or leased for about $2 million a plane. And with so many out-of-work pilots eager to fly, the new carriers have been able to recruit flight crews for less than half the top union scale of $150,000 a year. Says Reno Air president...