Word: plane
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When Eastern began shuttling in 1961, the service made its mark by guaranteeing passengers a seat with no reservations required. The airline even promised that a plane would take off with only one passenger on board, a promise it has kept five times. The service grew to 60 flights a day, 3 million passengers a year. So many people were commuting between the three cities that Pan Am decided to jump into the market two years ago, offering coffee, rubbery bagels, seat phones and boat service connecting a swank art deco terminal to Wall Street. This prompted Eastern to counter...
...retired and living in Williamsburg, Va., Meyers still remembers the us- and-them mentality of the Nixon campaign. "The press pool would be put in the rear of the plane and kept away from things," Meyers recalls. Morale became so bad that the Nixon people added another public relations man to the staff to entertain reporters. "One of his talents was making funny little animals out of balloons," Meyers laughs. "But once you've seen one little animal, you've satisfied a lifetime need...
...Then the plane vacuums up the particles again and again sails east. American landscapes are so resonant -- the sere wrinklings of Nevada mountains that hold the topaz lake, the Badlands, the great agricultural geometries of the Midwest, the stretch of Georgia that Sherman blackened. We fly now steady east, against the time zones, into darkness. At last Boston, below, slides toward us like Christmas, strings of light on velvet. How festive American cities look from the air at night...
...American scene: the candidate came down the front steps of his plane and walked across an agoraphobia of tarmac to a crowd of red-white-and-blue flag- waving, sign-pumping Republicans gathered behind the rope to cheer. In the Kodachrome sunshine, one saw the sharpshooters on the airport roof and the shiny black Secret Service van with black tinted windows, an agent standing on the tailgate with his hand inside a black nylon bag that concealed his automatic weapon. The sunshine itself became sinister and a chill of premonition crossed the mind -- the dank American underdream...
...mainland China received inordinate attention during the second and third television debates between Kennedy and Nixon (Quemoy and Matsu). Both candidates dedicated to strong national defense. The Soviet Union and the Cold War and the nuclear threat dominated everyone's horizon, with anxieties rising over the U-2 spy plane that the Soviets shot down on May 1, 1960, and the Soviets' launching of Sputnik 1 three years earlier. The rocket that took the satellite aloft punched a hole through American self-confidence and made education a central issue...