Word: grounds
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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American's 9,300 pilots are perfectly willing to ground themselves and the nation's largest carrier, taking with them its 90,000 employees. Their anger is directed at one employee in particular, Robert Crandall, chairman of AMR. "As long as you treat your employees as merely 'units costs,' like the Styrofoam coffee cups we throw out after every flight, morale will remain at rock bottom," wrote one pilot on the very active Website of the Allied Pilots' Association, which represents American's pilots...
...ugly is it getting up there? Real ugly: American Airlines says the reported number of incidents of verbal and physical abuse of crew members in 1995--900--was nearly triple that of 1994. Other carriers report similar increases, the result no doubt of more agitation on the ground and in the air. We hate to fly, and it shows. "It's absolutely gotten worse," says frequent traveler Heidi Weisman, 32, of Los Angeles. "I expect lots of waiting, pushing, shoving and uncomfortable seats. I can't remember the last time I was comfortable...
While airline marketers weave illusions of high-altitude happiness, the suits on the ground are slashing costs. First to go are the so-called amenities that would enhance the passenger's ride. According to Back Associates, airlines spent just 7.84% of overall expenses on passenger services in 1996, down from 9.45% in 1987. Enjoy the pretzels. Here's what else you can look forward...
After the ash, some volcanoes produce what is known as a pyroclastic flow, a ground-hugging cloud of superheated gas and rock that forces a cushion of air down the mountainside at up to 100 m.p.h., incinerating anything in its path. Other mountains spew that signature substance of the volcano: lava. (On this point Dante's Peak was wide of the scientific mark, concocting a fictitious mountain that produces both substances.) Lava moves at speeds ranging from less than 1 m.p.h. to 60 m.p.h...
Chouet is not the only researcher who's using the orbital high ground to study the volcanic underground. In Alaska, USGS researchers have placed satellite receivers at different points on the sloping side of the Augustine volcano and tuned them also to the gps. Like any volcanic mountain, Augustine is swelling slightly as it fills with magma. The degree of this deformation--as calculated by the gps--can help determine the imminence of the eruption. Elsewhere, scientists are leasing time on European or Japanese satellites to take photos of volcanic peaks as they undergo a seismic event like an earthquake...