Word: fatale
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...fatal rendezvous had originated in two points some 6,000 air miles apart. The relatively youthful KLM passengers, including three infants and 48 children under 18 years old, had boarded the KLM flight at Amsterdam's Schipol Airport. They were happily escaping rain, strong winds and some snow for individual vacations at resorts of their choice on Grand Canary Island, about 40 miles southeast of Tenerife. They had expected to land at Las Palmas, the Canaries' busiest city...
...record speaks for itself. In 1976 the U.S. airline industry had the safest year in its history. The 2,300 airliners flew 2.5 billion miles, carried 220 million passengers and had only four fatal accidents. The record low was in 1975, with three fatal accidents, but only 45 people were killed in 1976?compared with 124 the year before. Flying by commercial jet in the U.S. is now at least 15 times as safe per passenger-mile as driving in a car. The passenger who shows his ticket to the smiling stewardess and buckles himself into his narrow seat...
...PLANES. Today's jet is a marvel of engineering and safety. Based on actuarial records for new aircraft, Lloyd's of London had expected the Boeing 747 to have at least two fatal accidents during its first two years. But only one commercial crash has occurred since the jet was introduced in 1970?in Nairobi in 1974?and that was because the Lufthansa pilot did not extend the proper wing flaps while taking off. The 747 was blameless, of course, for the catastrophe at Tenerife. Leaving aside Nairobi and Tenerife, a total of 297 of these jets, operated...
...industry professionals and the public alike feared one thing: the horrendous disasters that could befall a plane built to carry nearly 400 passengers. Yet the 747 has proved remarkably lucky in the years since, carrying 140 million passengers and logging 2.25 billion air miles with only two fatal mishaps. When the first major wide-bodied aircraft accident did occur, near Paris in 1974, it was a Turkish Air Lines DC-10 that carried 346 people to their deaths. The 747 seemed destined to suffer mainly in movie fancy-in a mid-air collision in Airport 75, in a crash...
...plot twist that even Hollywood would have thought farfetched, a bomb had exploded in a vase in a flower shop at El Gando shortly before the planes were due to land there. Both were diverted to Tenerife-and had been cleared to resume their journeys when the fatal encounter occurred...