Word: plane
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...airlines will have to scramble to disprove the latest doubts, which could weigh heavily on the minds of consumers. Katherine Dallam, a 31-year-old computer-graphics entrepreneur in the Bronx, worries about flying because, among other things, she keeps hearing about "parts falling off the planes." Eastern has acknowledged a decline in bookings in the wake of the FAA probe, even though both that carrier and Continental expect the investigation to exonerate them. Ronald King, a Brooklyn school counselor, almost canceled two Eastern tickets for a Bahamas vacation with his girlfriend. Says he: "I had to stop reading...
...worst U.S. case was in 1979, when a replacement engine that had been improperly mounted on the wing of an American Airlines DC-10 broke free on takeoff from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, causing a crash that killed 275. Only three years ago, the worst single-plane accident in history occurred when a bulkhead ruptured on a Japan Air Lines 747, destroying the tail assembly and sending the jumbo jet crashing into a mountain near Tokyo, killing 520. Boeing later admitted that its technicians had incorrectly riveted the bulkhead during a repair job seven years earlier...
...Aloha incident could obviously have been a far worse tragedy than it was. Inspecting the plane last week, the pilots and investigators marveled at the relatively small strip of cargo tube that held the plane together. In 1981 a 737 flown by Far Eastern Air Transport was not so lucky. It tore completely apart over Taiwan, dooming all 110 aboard. In both accidents, the plane's skin fractured on the top side just behind the cockpit...
Though the precise cause of the Aloha plane's fuselage failure will take months for federal authorities to determine, it is believed that metal fatigue created the stress cracks in the plane's laminated-aluminum skin. When the cracks ruptured, the air rushing by began to peel back the roof through the so-called rip stops, the rigid upright supports in the body shell. Investigators surmise that the metal fatigue was hastened by exposure to corrosive salt air and the exceptionally high number of takeoff-and-landing cycles, nearly 90,000, that the 19-year-old island-hopping plane...
...running engine on an A300 Airbus, which sucked the part out of his hands and into its intake. According to the carrier's machinists' union, a mechanic wanted to take the engine apart, but a foreman overruled him, and four months later the engine blew up after the plane took off from Miami. The airline denies any connection between the incidents. In a separate episode in February, a Continental 747 taking off from London's Gatwick Airport abruptly lost power in one engine. The plane came close enough to a hill at the end of the runway that control-tower...