Word: jetted
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Flying Nun was fantasy, but in Los Angeles the airborne Archbishop is for real. To enable Roman Catholic Archbishop Roger Mahony to get around his three-county, 8,700-sq.-mi. archdiocese, anonymous businessmen have given him a $400,000 jet-powered helicopter. Mahony is upgrading his pilot's license so he can fly it solo. Zinging along at 160 m.p.h., he can cut the travel time to the seminary at Camarillo to 15 minutes; by car it took up to 2 1/2 hours. Archdiocesan spokesmen insist the money has not been diverted from other purposes: the contributors are donating...
Recognizing the growing concern among passengers and Washington lawmakers, the aviation industry issued a report last week calling for a sweeping overhaul of its older planes. The $800 million renovation would help rejuvenate the 3,300-jet U.S. fleet, which averages 13 years of service per jetliner and is the oldest in the non-Communist world. The industry report, prepared by a task force of public and private experts, urged carriers to repair or replace critical parts on 1,300 vintage Boeing aircraft. The study, launched after a large section of fuselage ripped off an Aloha Airlines 737 last April...
While the latch problem may not have been directly related to the plane's age, newer aircraft generally need less maintenance than older jets. Most of the major carriers, especially the profitable ones, are upgrading their fleets as fast as the aircraftmakers can build them. United took delivery of 23 new Boeing 737-300s in the second half of 1988, thus lowering the average age of its 400-jet fleet from 14.9 years in July to 13.5 years as of Jan. 1. The American fleet, which averaged 10.8 years old last July, has been reduced to 9.4 years currently...
...rush to buy new planes has proved a mixed blessing for Boeing, the largest jet builder. The Seattle-based company, which sold 56% of the jets delivered worldwide last year, has a record $54 billion backlog of orders for 1,049 planes. But that enviable business has led to late deliveries and unaccustomed lapses in quality control. Over the past four years, the FAA has levied 14 fines totaling $245,000 against Boeing for putting faulty parts in exit doors and for other quality-control errors. The fines included a $145,000 penalty that Boeing paid last March for installing...
Boeing's Shrontz pointedly defended the safety record of U.S. airlines when he spoke in Washington last month. Noting that U.S. carriers spent $6 billion to maintain their fleets in 1987, Shrontz said a typical jet receives up to ten man-hours of maintenance for each hour of flight. He also chided reporters for frequently being too quick to speculate about the cause of air accidents and too slow to point out the air industry's strengths. "Since the 1960s," he said, "there's been an 80% decline in the number of fatal accidents per million airplane miles...