Word: piloting
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Even with its overall record of safety excellence, flying by its very nature can arouse fear. Passengers must surrender control of their fate to the plane and its pilot once the aircraft leaves the ground. And while a driver may suffer only minor injury or even walk away from the scene of a car wreck, air crashes are generally fatal...
...qualified are the pilots who fly the U.S. commercial fleet? The rapid growth of airlines since deregulation has created a need for more people in the cockpit, and major airlines have raided commuter carriers for some of their top personnel. In addition, a few pilots are jumping from one airline to another in order to gain higher pay. Warns Patricia Goldman, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board: "The enormous turnover rate of the pilot population results in pilots who just meet FAA requirements. It means crews flying together who have limited experience of working with each other...
...there was this old boy who was not brain damaged so much as he was impetuous and romantic, the sort of fellow who, but for the grace of poor vision and ten thumbs, a trick knee and an unhealthy dependence on bonded bourbon, might have made a fighter pilot. Lately he has been captivated and obsessed by some of the slickest ads in print, the ones depicting the F-20 Tigershark poised on a liquid mirror out in the Mojave Desert. What is it about this bird, he wonders, that has caused it to be acclaimed in the Atlantic, praised...
...testing Black Hawk helicopters; past McDonnell Douglas, at work on the F-15; and just beyond the Air Force and its antisatellite system; and comes to rest outside the Northrop hangar, wherein the Tigershark resides. Our innocent is not met by a sales rep; rather, Roy Martin, a test pilot, blond and angular and wearing a jumpsuit crosshatched by so many zippered pockets that he could carry a disassembled jeep around in his coveralls, takes the shopper...
Martin--no American test pilot should be allowed to look dissimilar to Roy Martin--unintentionally flatters his charge by asking him whether he was ever a fighter jock. Martin needs this information to guide his presentation. After all, one should never bore the experienced with a nuts-and-bolts primer. The visitor answers negatively, tugs a forelock and asks how fast the F-20 accelerates from zero to 60. (Two and one-half minutes after a cold start, the Tigershark is flying at 38,000 ft., 13 miles from its base, the plane's radar locked in on an intruder...