Word: midair
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...minutes out of Zurich's Kloten Airport en route to Tel Aviv last week when the Zurich tower logged the kind of report that airmen dread. "We are on fire!" called Swissair's pilot. Before he could obey Zurich's emergency instructions, the jet exploded in midair, spraying metal and bodies on an Alpine forest below. All 47 people aboard perished...
...tragedy into her life. In 1955, her father asked her mother to fly with him on a business trip to Los Angeles in his company-owned plane. Mrs. Skakel usually preferred to take the train, but this time she made an exception. Near Tulsa, Okla., the plane exploded in midair, killing all aboard. Ethel's sister Ann phoned her the news. Ethel was silent for a few seconds, then said: "It's all right. It's all right." Softly, she added: "Goodbye." Ann was momentarily appalled. "Then I realized ?this was Ethel's great strength...
...letter writer recommends stripping passengers nude on flights headed for Miami "so that everybody can see everything and nobody can hide a weapon." Another suggests that only the sexiest stewardesses should be assigned to southbound flights so that, if the need arose, they could seduce the skyjacker in midair...
...first three weeks of 1969 to eight. At that rate, this year should easily break the alarming 1968 record of 28. There have been 46 skyjackings to Cuba since the first U.S. airliner was forced to land there in May 1961, and despite the enormous risks of midair piracy, the skyjackings have miraculously caused no fatalities or even a single injury. The routine-including the standard radio message-has become well-established...
Neither psychiatry nor technology has yet come up with a way to stop the growing wave of skyjacking. Because of the obvious danger an armed skyjacker poses to airplane and passengers, pilots simply go along with his wishes. An unhinged desperado could easily cause a crash or midair explosion that would kill all aboard. Only six attempts have failed, all on flukes. Sheriff's deputies shot out the tires of a skyjacked Continental Boeing 707 trying to take off from El Paso. Daniel Richards, 33, an Ohio mental patient who tried to commandeer a Delta flight suddenly dropped...