Word: jetted
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...notion--privately held by many government officials almost from the beginning--that Flight 800 was brought down by a bomb or even a missile. During a Friday- afternoon news conference, Francis revealed that the NTSB was consulting with investigators of what proved to be bombings of an Air India jet in 1985 and of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 to see if the sounds on the TWA voice recorder match up with those recovered from the other two downed planes...
...missile theory has been largely discredited. Several spectators said they saw a red streak approach the plane before it burst into flames, sparking concern that something like a Katyusha rocket had been fired at the jet. Investigators have shown, however, that an explosion from a bomb could produce the optical illusion of such an attack as gas poured out of the pressurized cabin...
Airline companies are intently focused on efficiency, which means minimizing the amount of time a multimillion-dollar piece of equipment is on the ground. But this short turnaround time might increase vulnerability. An arriving jet is swarmed by 50 or so mechanics, janitors, refuelers, caterers and ramp workers, not all of them airline employees. It's a period of nearly unlimited access by people who may not even know one another. FBI investigators are no doubt interviewing anyone who so much as came near Flight 800 as it was serviced at the gate at J.F.K...
...flitted between the events outside one's door and the reports of those events on television. More hard information was to be learned from TV than from the dark, but there were things that the cameras did not or could not pick up--the reek of the jet fuel burning; the twinkling helicopter lights competing with the stars; the moist, ominous air; the sight of silent, empty ambulances heading back to other quiet towns like Flanders and Manorville; or the people themselves, hunched in front of their TV sets, growing steadily more aware of their altered state...
...seat backs and tray tables to an upright position before takeoff--all the irritating in-flight punctilio, with its bloodless ritual language--but as we strap ourselves in, our minds are projecting fireballs, and calculating odds, and trying to calm themselves more urgently than before. The worst part of jet travel is our eggs-in-a-carton passivity: inert flesh encapsulated for a leap of faith that may be (we tell ourselves) as statistically acceptable as ever, but psychologically harder now. The passengers on Flight 800 began a trajectory to the City of Light and ended, after a few minutes...