Word: plane
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...abruptly lost altitude, passengers began singing hymns and bracing for a crash. "I was quite sure we weren't going to make it," said Becklin, a University of Hawaii astronomer, who told of ducking his head to avoid the debris streaming from the remnants of the fuselage. "The plane was disintegrating so pieces were falling off it, molding was coming down, and the wind was catching it. The hole up front got bigger and bigger, and I knew it was just a matter of time before the plane came apart...
...ground near Maui's Kahului Airport, Frank Rizzo was returning from lunch when he noticed Flight 243 making a sharp descent toward the runway. "It looked like a cargo plane with the big cargo door open, and it went into a kind of nose dive," he said. "The nose wheel hit first, and then the main wheels hit, and the entire plane settled and just sort of buckled." Even before the airport rescue vehicles arrived, two nurses clambered aboard to help injured and bleeding passengers still strapped to their seats. Many of the survivors rushed to congratulate Pilot Robert Schornstheimer...
That night Schornstheimer, 42, spoke to his father by telephone. "All of a sudden there was this noise, and the plane's flying funny and there's a big drag on it, so he immediately decided to change the flight plan ((and)) land at the Maui airport," the father recounted. "He said he was calm and did what needed to be done, just like any other pilot would have...
Pressurizing an aircraft for high-altitude flight and then depressurizing it for a landing is analogous to inflating and deflating a balloon. Eventually, the fuselage of the plane, like the surface of the balloon, is apt to give way. The Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 was what aviation professionals call a "high-time" aircraft -- one nearing the end of its operational life -- and had undergone far more pressurization cycles than Far Eastern...
None of that, however, can overshadow the near-miracle that Flight 243 survived, and with it all but one of the 95 people aboard. Thanks to a gallant pilot, this is one plane that did land safely on little more than a wing and a prayer...