Word: planes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...hell, and often they're not." Just lucky. "All you need is a clock and an explosive that's powerful enough," says Ronay. On Pan Am Flight 103, the bomb was the size of a coffee cup, but it happened to be placed near the skin of the plane, where it broke through the fuselage and weakened the frame of the aircraft, causing the plane to break up. "If it had been inboard," says Ronay, "it might not have done that kind of damage. Luggage makes a good buffer." Terrorists may have been lucky with TWA Flight 800 as well...
There is already a small community of people whose legacy is grief. Every time a plane goes down, the Lockerbie families cringe. This time the parallels are almost unnerving: a night-time transatlantic flight destroyed most likely by a terrorist bomb shortly after takeoff. Richard Mack lost his younger brother William in Lockerbie. When he heard the TWA news last week, he couldn't sleep. His wife Kathleen became ill; his 74-year-old father John collapsed. Other Lockerbie survivors had fits of anxiety and sleeplessness as well. Mack sympathized immediately with the hundreds of families who were reeling from...
...foreign stations, ordering intelligence officers to comb their sources for leads. Agents quietly began checking the Athens airport, where the TWA flight originated, for security breaches. The names of all the passengers who flew the Athens-to-New York City leg, as well as those who boarded the plane in New York, were traced through computerized data banks for links with terrorist groups. The Israeli, Jordanian and Egyptian intelligence services were asked to run checks as well. The CIA was casting its net as widely as possible, considering suspects ranging from Colombian drug traffickers to disgruntled airline employees...
England is also well ahead in developing stronger fuselages that can withstand blast damage. (The FAA is largely focusing its efforts on strengthening the containers that carry luggage, and not the entire plane.) But such improvements have their costs: they could boost an airplane's weight, and reduce by 10 or 20 the number of seats available. That could raise the price of a ticket some $50."They know these containers work, and they know they'd make detection cheaper, faster and more accurate," says Monetti. "But the airlines say they're too expensive...
...fire in the plane. It was old and faulty equipment. It was the hydraulic system, the electrical system, the structure. A small aircraft hit it in midair. It was a terrorist bomb. Nearly everyone suspects that first and strongest, and the more officials say not to speculate about it, the more one speculates. Within a few hours, when it is clear that none of the 200-plus people who were on TWA Flight 800 are going to be found alive, the mood of the town is laden with sorrow. East Moriches (established early 1700s, population a little more than...