Word: plane
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...I.A.P.A. pointed out that at least 17 DC-10s have been wrecked since the plane began flying 18 years ago; that amounts to 3.8% of the 445 DC-10s built by McDonnell Douglas, a higher percentage than that recorded by comparable superjets like the Lockheed L-1011 (1.2%). Both the FAA and McDonnell Douglas rejected the I.A.P.A.'s request. Said FAA spokesman John Leyden: "There's nothing that's come out of the Sioux City accident indicating a basic design flaw that would warrant such an action...
...mechanical malfunction. Flight 803 left Seoul and made trouble-free stops in Thailand and Saudi Arabia. Approaching Tripoli's airport in a dense morning fog, the pilot decided to land, even though only an hour earlier an arriving Soviet Aeroflot jet had prudently detoured to Malta. The KAL plane missed the runway by more than a mile, cartwheeled and slammed into two cars and two farmhouses...
...Toronto and Los Angeles scares were the sort of mishaps that have always plagued air travel; pilot error, leaks, blown tires and engine shutdowns are frequent occurrences. But the Flight 232 disaster was of a different order altogether: a loss of all three of the plane's redundant hydraulic systems at the same moment, rendering it almost impossible to control. FAA investigators are combing a 16-sq.-mi. area of Iowa cornfields for pieces of a fan disk of the plane's No. 2 engine, which was mounted high on the DC-10's tail. They hope that examining...
...nagging possibility of an inherent design flaw in the DC-10 remains. In 1979 an American Airlines DC-10 taking off from Chicago lost its left-wing engine, tearing out its hydraulic lines; the plane crashed, killing 273. The I.A.P.A. won a federal court order that forced the FAA to ground the entire DC-10 fleet for inspection. The planes were inspected and sent aloft again five weeks later...
...matter how safe the seat, it cannot help a youngster sitting on an adult's lap. "A small child sitting unrestrained on a plane becomes a little missile when the aircraft hits severe turbulence," observes Northwest Airlines spokesman Bob Gibbons. Turbulence of the kind that recently jolted a Miami-bound American Airlines jet and injured 45 people poses more of a hazard to the average traveler than does the possibility of a crash...