Word: purser
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...some implausible, others surreal. There were accounts of the hijackers turning away from stark brutality to administer kindnesses to passengers: fetching a blanket for a young girl with bronchitis, providing cough drops for a passenger with cold symptoms. One terrorist, it was recalled, proposed marriage to the flight's purser; at another point, a hijacker beat a passenger, threatened to shoot him, then apologized and wept with his victim. Passengers became targets in many games of Russian roulette. Here are the recollections of some of the hostages...
...Said Toga: "He took out four cartridges and spun the thing, and then put the gun to my belly and pulled the trigger. The gun didn't go off." Twice more, the captor pulled the trigger, Toga said. Toga disclosed that one of the hijackers proposed marriage to Purser Uli Derickson. Said Toga: "That was the only time she lost control. The guy was serious about the proposal, and it really threw Uli for a loop...
...communication lines, hot water continuously pumping through their wet suits for warmth. Said Supervising Diver Steve Jennings: "This is the hardest-bad currents, high seas, a rotting ship. The Doria was a weird wreck, very unforgiving." After a week of clearing debris from the first-class foyer and purser's office, the team found two safes. The divers were able to free one, a Bank of Rome safe, with acetylene torches and hoist it on board. They also solved a question that had long haunted Gimbel: Why had the ship gone down so swiftly? Descending through the hulk, Gimbel...
...tarmac of Tehran's Mehrabad Airport. As aides and reporters milled about, the frail old man, wearing a black turban and ankle-length robes, stepped out of the aircraft's door into the chill February morning. His back hunched, he clutched the arm of an Air France purser as he walked down the portable ramp to touch Iranian soil. After 15 years in exile, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. 78, spiritual leader of a revolution that has been building to a frightening climax, had come home at last. The moment was, conceivably, the start of a new era for a country that...
...petition to the state attorney general demanding refunds. Leonard Lansburgh, one of the ship's owners, tried to pacify the passengers by announcing that drinks were on the house. It hardly helped. Fistfights and swearing matches broke out. One drunken man took a swing at a woman purser, who thereupon screamed into the p.a. system, "Emergency! Emergency!" By then, the crew-including Greeks, Jamaicans and Koreans, who had difficulty communicating both with one another and with the guests-began to protest too. One maitre d' fled his dining room in dismay. Said he: "I'm going...