Word: runways
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...front and to the left of the trespasser and rocks its wings-or at night, the its lights- to signal "Follow me." The off-course plane copies the signal and reply "I will obey." At that point the fighter heads for an airport and flies low over the runway where the intruder is supposed to touch down...
...Djamena, the Chadian capital. A few minutes later four Jaguar fighter-bombers repeated the maneuver. By the end of the day the little airport, which normally handles only a dozen civilian airliners a week, had begun to look like a military airbase. Parked next to the jets on the runway apron were half a dozen Transall military freighters and a C-135F aerial refueling plane, together with five fighter aircraft from Zaire. "Operation Manta," as the government of President Francis Mitterrand had code-named France's challenge to Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi's ambitions in Chad, was beginning...
...Edwards Air Force Base in California, will be eerie in a different way. Like a huge ghost ship, the 100-ton Challenger will silently sweep in over the Mojave Desert with nary a beacon light blinking. It will not be visible until it is about 200 feet above the runway; then it will begin reflecting the illumination from batteries of xenon searchlights along the strip...
Seconds later, the 767 hit the 6,800-ft.-long runway with such force that the nose wheel collapsed under it. Sparks flew and clouds of black smoke trailed from the tires as Pearson locked the brakes. Said Passenger Bryce Bell: "People were screaming, kids were crying." The plane finally came to a stop just 300 yds. short of a cluster of trailers filled with families. The only casualties: several passengers who were slightly injured as they slid down the plane's emergency escape chutes...
...while on the mission after that, a refurbished Columbia, NASA'S other operational shuttle, will return to orbit carrying the heaviest single cargo to date, the 34,500-lb. European-built space lab. NASA does not want to risk a landing on the relatively narrow, marsh-lined Kennedy runway during either mission...