Word: landing
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...time you shuffled off a commercial airliner and saw just one pilot in the cockpit? Probably never. Federal rules require two pilots for every airline flight, and all airliners must be equipped with GPS, weather-tracking and collision-avoidance systems. Airliners fly predetermined routes, usually on autopilot, and always land at airports. When the weather turns cloudy or the night turns dark, airline pilots have the training and equipment to fly using just their instruments. "You wouldn't get onto an airliner that can't fly through clouds," says Drew Ferguson, lead pilot for Metro Life Flight, which operates...
Unlike airliners, medical helicopters are unstable aircraft that require constant input from the pilot. They often land in remote desert canyons, on freeways and in muddy farmers' fields, places without precise approach paths, powerful weather-tracking systems or even lights. "In a medical helicopter, you're basically an on-demand taxi," says Blumen, who recently completed a study of 264 medical-helicopter accidents stretching back...
...Even flying with two pilots, workload can be an issue," Pietro says before the flight. "If you're flying single-pilot in bad weather and you're trying to land on a highway, it gets real scary. There's just not enough hands to do all the work...
Congo is the land Rwanda left behind. At the border, the road turns from asphalt to mud and grit. Rwandan officials are famous for their incorruptibility, but Congolese immigration shook me down. Beyond lies the city of Goma, a sprawl of tin- and grass-roofed huts and refugee camps...
...indefatigable local booster. "They're talking about making my whole town wireless!" he says enthusiastically. Equally smitten are his parishioners, like Howard Steinmetz. After decades working his farm--most of them minus a hand lost to a field chopper in 1959--Steinmetz is finally auctioning off the land. Selling, he says, "is tough." But his religious life is supporting him. "Everybody was pretty excited to get a young one," he says, indicating Baker-Trinity...