Word: controllers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...left side pulls to make the plane climb, the right one pushes to keep it in a dive. Gravity and the two powerful Pratt & Whitney engines on the Boeing 767 continue to force the plane down. A second later, a small shield is flicked up over the twin-engine control levers on the central console, and both engines switch off. Four seconds after that, the plane's speed brakes, panels deployed atop the wings rise into the airstream, disrupting the lift in an effort to slow down the descent. Suddenly, the plane begins to climb...
Those bare clicks, murmurs and whines recorded by the plane's two black boxes, then synchronized with ground-control radar tracks, are all the "facts" investigators have so far to construct a picture of what happened to Flight 990. But do they add up to the terrible possibility that one of the pilots deliberately sent the plane into its death dive, committing an unspeakable act of self-destruction and mass murder...
Investigators say the strongest indication of a deliberate act lies in what the airplane did. No alarms signaling equipment breakdown or other emergency went off before the autopilot was disconnected. The steep descent was steady and controlled. The captain would not pull his control yoke up while the co-pilot pushed down. There was no radio mayday and evidently no attempt to signal a hijacking. The plane's final climb may be explained by traditional aerodynamics or by a pilot's desperate effort to regain altitude...
...most Americans be rejoicing that their PalmPilots didn't erase 700 names in their address books and that air-traffic-control computers at J.F.K. didn't instruct planes to land in Central Park...
...public-health community must find a way to pry apart the beauty and disease-control facets of the obesity debate, as raised in the article "Will We Keep Getting Fatter?" [SPECIAL REPORT, Nov. 8]. Actress Camryn Manheim is overweight and lovely. So is my wife. No one wants a nation of size-8 robots. I'd settle for an effective battle against extreme obesity (starting in infancy) and getting everyone into exercising more. That should improve health without terrorizing the merely plump or pinning our hopes on a magic pill. CHRIS FOREMAN Takoma Park...