Word: crash
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...NTSB has not finished its investigation of the crash, but the pilots' conversation supports the leading line of speculation about the causes: the snowy, 24° weather. First Officer Roger Alan Pettit, 31, the copilot, initially expressed concern about the icy conditions, as he would again and again. Twenty minutes after the 737's last glycol wash, Pettit joked: "Maybe we can taxi upside a some [727] sittin' there runnin' [and] blow off whatever [ice and snow have built up on the wings]." Several minutes later Pettit remarked, "It's been a while since...
...fears proved true. Three days after the crash, World revised its passenger count: two men, Walter Metcalf, 69, and his son Leo, 40, both of Dedham, Mass., were missing and presumed drowned. The discovery was made after the Metcalf family, whose repeated inquiries to World were rebuffed, took their concern about the missing relatives to state police. The airline, which has been ordered by the Civil Aeronautics Board to produce all passenger documentation, claims that a no-show in Newark and an unpulled ticket stub in Oakland allowed the Metcalfs to slip through uncounted...
...divers searched for the bodies, investigators examined the plane for clues to the crash. Officials are trying to determine if the plane touched down too late or whether the runway was icy. Pilot Peter Langley says he tried to slow the aircraft with brakes, reverse thrust and wing flaps. About 40 minutes before the crash, another pilot radioed that braking conditions on the runway were "poor to nil." But five planes landed safely between that report and the accident...
Meanwhile, investigators studying the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 in Washington, D.C., eleven days earlier used the plane's flight recorder data to reconstruct its takeoff. The Boeing 737 took 47 sec. rather than the usual 30 sec. to reach its lift-off speed of 147 knots, thus putting it farther down the runway than normal when it ascended. The plane stayed aloft less than 30 sec. and reached a maximum height of 337 ft. when it should have been much higher. Investigators are looking into the possibility that runway slush slowed the plane on takeoff. They also...
...allow suspense alone to drive them forward through the book. The Villa Golitsyn can be read once for fun and a second time for enlightenment. Read's seven earlier novels received critical praise but not the commercial popularity of Alive (1974), his nonfiction account of a plane crash in the Andes and the ordeal of its survivors. This book may bring his fiction the wider audience it deserves. Like his countryman Graham Greene, Read mixes espionage and religion, dishonesty and faith. His novel jangles the nerves and lingers in the mind...