Word: cargos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...idea of space tourism is suddenly hot. It has been 36 years since John Glenn dipped the first American toe into orbit; in the decades since, space travel has become numbingly common--essentially zero-gravity milk runs to ferry cargo up and down. But this very monotony has given Aldrin and others an idea. Now that visiting space is so routine, why shouldn't anyone--even a vacationer--be able to book a seat? Says Aldrin: "We're on the brink of at last democratizing space...
Four months after the ValuJet plane went down, a Federal Express DC-10 was forced into an emergency landing at Newburgh, N.Y., because of fire in its cargo hold. The captain reported smoke at the same altitude as Swissair 111--33,000 ft.--and began to descend. Eighteen minutes later, the FedEx crew was sliding down ropes and chutes from the plane, which burned steadily for more than three hours after landing. The cause of the fire was never pinpointed, but investigators discovered such undeclared items as aerosol cans and plastic bottles containing acidic liquids, prompting the National Transportation Safety...
...traffic controllers appears to rule out terrorism. But not the terror of mechanical failure. And so the questions were asked. Was it a problem akin to what most probably destroyed TWA 800--a stray spark igniting gases in a fuel tank? Or was it some hazardous, poorly packed cargo like the kind that destroyed ValuJet Flight 592 over the Florida Everglades? Or was it something else, some yet unknown and insidious little technicality...
...freight aboard ValuJet Flight 592 ignited and sent the DC-9 plunging into the Everglades. The generators had been mistakenly marked empty, and the crew never knew that the plane was carrying hazardous material. Could similar undeclared baggage have doomed Swissair 111? In 1990, air personnel discovered undeclared hazardous cargo--usually because it leaked or emitted a smell--on 63 occasions; by last year, that number had ballooned to 349. Shippers are still not required to disclose to air carriers the contents of their parcels--not even if they contain hazardous materials...
...Force's C-17 Globemaster was chosen last week to fly Keiko, the killer whale star of "Free Willy," back home because the rugged cargo plane is uniquely suited to land on the short runway at Iceland's Heimaey airport. It's not as well equipped, unfortunately, for one of its primary missions: dropping parachuting G.I.'s rapidly into the world's hot spots. It seems that in flight, the hulking 300-ton plane kicks up a lot of turbulence. Such swirling atmospheric eddies can entangle soldiers in their parachute lines, collapse their chutes or hurl airborne paratroopers dangerously into...