Word: planes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...wasn't just older, cheaper planes that won over Kosovo. The real star of the show was a new but very cheap bomb. While the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) is a pretty low-tech weapon, its satellite-guided tail fins let a plane at any altitude drop it right on target through clouds, smoke or darkness. At about $20,000 a pop, it's far cheaper than the $1 million cruise missile that has been the precision-guided weapon of choice for the past decade. "Once you get the air defenses suppressed, you can just fly over and puke...
...final moments of last Tuesday's American Airlines Flight 1420 were a ride through white-knuckle hell. The skies near Little Rock National Airport were being thrashed by a top-of-the-scale, level-6 thunderstorm. The plane and its human cargo--139 passengers and six crew members--were being tossed around by winds up to 80 m.p.h. And in the cockpit, the pilot and co-pilot were getting two separate wind-shear alerts. When the wheels of the twin-engine Super MD-80 finally touched down, it was on a runway made slick by heavy rain and marble-size...
...storm-tossed landing was a disaster. The plane skidded wildly, at one point rotating 150[degrees]. It slid off the end of the runway, broadsiding a steel tower that held landing lights. When the plane finally came to rest on a bank of the Arkansas River, it had split in three, and a fire had broken out near its left wing. As it erupted in flames, passengers fled for their lives. Nine people, including veteran pilot Captain Richard Buschmann, died--the first fatalities on a major U.S. airline in nearly a year and a half--and 83 were injured...
...contributing factor was the pilot's decision to go into that weather and land," says former Department of Transportation inspector general Mary Schiavo. "At a certain point, you have to say the weather wins." Co-pilot Michael Origel, who survived the crash, disagrees. He told investigators Friday that the plane approached through a break in the clouds and that the runway was largely visible at all times. But if the plane was facing winds of over 50 m.p.h., it was in danger, says Flight Safety Foundation president Stuart Matthews. "That's a helluva lot of wind, and most aircraft...
...Although Carmack hit a one-out double in the ninth, Dubois stranded him, and Harvard was left with nothing to show for its cross-country plane trip...