Word: midair
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Needlessly alarmist? As it happened, no planes came hurtling down, none collided in midair, no one was hurt. So Pittsburgh's mishap barely stirred notice. But such technological glitches are fast becoming routine in the nation's air-traffic-control system. By the National Transportation Safety Board's reckoning, anti- quated tracking equipment freezes up, shuts down or fizzles out all too often. "There is not one day that goes by without our losing radar or radio communication with an aircraft," says Joseph Fruscella, president of NATCA's eastern region. "It compromises safety on a regular basis...
...shown itself to be quite able. There are a number of talented impressionists in the group, including Tim Meadows, who can juggle O.J. and Michael Jackson with a skilled facility. Another high point of the season has been Molly Shannon's disturbed Catholic schoolgirl. As she jumps unprovoked into midair and falls into people and folding chairs, Shannon has proved to be a first-rate physical comic...
...running up from behind, hooking an umbrella handle onto a window ledge and hanging on while fighting off a brood of bad guys. (Gape in envy, Keanu Reeves!) In The Armour of God II: Operation Condor he drives his motorcycle off a riverside pier and leaps off in midair to catch onto the net of a passing mechanical crane. (Page your stunt double, Mr. Seagal!) In Project A, improving on the clock-tower hanging scene from Lloyd's Safety Last, Chan falls from the sky-high tower through two awnings and crashes to earth-on his head. (Tiptoe away, Lloyd...
...gasoline, and that many of the passengers were also clutching jugs of gasoline as carry-on luggage. In Irkutsk this January, the pilot of a Tupolev-154 ignored a warning from a flight engineer that one of the engines was "dangerous." One hour later, the aircraft caught fire in midair and crashed, killing all 120 people on board...
...product is a bit pricey, considering that the typical Cessna sells for about $15,000. Yet many fliers may not put a price limit on peace of mind. "If you fly into a mountainside at night, a parachute is not going to help," Popov admits. "But the majority of midair collisions are not fatal in the air. You're alive all the way down." Popov believes his system could prevent more than half of the 1,000 general-aviation fatalities that occur each year in the U.S. "It's that one added bit of insurance," says Mary Jones...