Word: midair
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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...
...that safe air travel is being compromised by obsolescent equipment, reckless penny pinching and severe staffing cuts that have eliminated 2,000 controller positions since 1982, even as air traffic has soared 35%. Says Gus Guerra, a California controller: "It's almost as though they're waiting for a midair collision where we lose hundreds of lives before they finally see the big light bulb...
...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...