Word: mountainous
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...crash in Japan was the fourth major air disaster this year. It followed the apparent midair disintegration of an Air-India 747 off the coast of Ireland on June 23, in which all 329 occupants perished. In February, an Iberia Boeing 727 crashed into a mountain in Spain, killing all 148 aboard. Just two weeks ago, a Delta Air Lines wide-bodied Lockheed L-1011 failed to reach the runway while attempting a landing in a thunderstorm at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, dooming 134. The accidents seemed to have little in common; in all but one, however, widebodied airliners were involved...
...Ochiai was surprised to see Mount Fuji out a left window. "I thought the plane was heading back to Haneda," she said. Actually, radar operators saw the aircraft make a wide circle at this point, fully 360°, near Japan's sacred mountain, which was far north of the planned course to Osaka...
...ground, Keiichi Yamazaki heard the unusual sound of an airliner above his home in Nippara, a remote mountain village. "All of a sudden, a big air plane appeared from between mountains, just like out of no where," he recalled. "Four times it leaned to the left, and each time it tried to recover its balance to the right. It was flying just like a staggering drunk...
...nothing moving in the desolate, fiery scene. Much of the wreckage had spilled onto a nearly 45° slope, and there was no way for even a chopper to land safely in the dark. Expecting no survivors, the searchers spent the rainy night setting up a base in the mountain village of Uenomura, 42 miles from the crash site. Area firemen and Japan's Ministry of Transport also mobilized searchers. But the narrow, serpentine roads and trails winding up from the villages in the valley ended far below the wreckage high on the mountain. Nonetheless, some rescuers set out on foot...
...when the world's largest airliner smashes into a mountain, there is no escape, except for the very few--four this time--favored by the whims of fate. That was tragically clear last week as the helicopters carried body after body, wrapped in bright blankets, down from the smoldering wreckage on Mount Osutaka. --By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Yukinori Ishikawa/Fujioka and Edwin M. Reingold/Tokyo