Word: instruments
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Europeans are more advanced. France, for example, uses a battery of jet engines to blast away fog from Paris' two international airports?De Gaulle and Orly. That technique has not been adopted in the U.S. largely because of the noise and the pollution it creates. Using their advanced instrument landing systems, the French and the British airlines operate under conditions that would shut down most American airports...
Whatever his rank, the training never stops. He is constantly practicing instrument landings and emergency procedures, both in the cockpit of a jet and in remarkably realistic flight simulators. Twice a year, the FAA requires the airline to check out his proficiency. In addition, an FAA inspector?completely unannounced?may show up just before takeoff, occupy the jump seat in the cockpit?and "lift" (start revocation proceedings) the captain's license on the spot if he detects a major failing during the flight...
Since that disaster?and a few other ones caused by pilots' ignoring the warnings of their instrument panels?the FAA and the airlines have worked hard to toughen up the discipline. Most aviation experts believe the efforts have produced good results...
Every jetliner is also equipped with a device that stridently warns a pilot who is unknowingly flying toward a mountainside, a tower or the ground. The instrument flashes a red light, sounds a whooping alarm and plays a recording that orders, "Pull up! Pull up!" The system seems to be working well. In 1976, the first year it was universally used, no U.S. airliner rammed into an obstruction. During the previous ten years, there had been an average of six such crashes annually...
...images go, you can't beat it: the Goodyear blimp suddenly looming large and low-much too low-over the Orange Bowl. To turn that benign and stately symbol of the country in a holiday mood into an instrument of unpredictable menace is a stroke of Pop-cult genius. If the blimp can run amuck, even in fantasy, what is there left that we can rely...