Word: runways
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...stalling speed of a 707 flying straight and level and loaded to 250,000 lbs. is about 196 m.p.h. with the flaps retracted. In a turn with the wings banked at 17 degrees, the kind that jets often make when climbing away from Idlewild's runway 31-L, the stalling speed goes up to about 215 m.p.h. A 707 flying below that speed is apt to lower a wing and dive toward the ground. According to competent eyewitnesses, this is what American's 707 did. The stall, if it was a stall, might have been caused by retracting...
...Griggs, 57. When he bought a 19-acre estate outside town in 1945, it was surrounded by pleasantly rolling open country. Then in 1952, the county built the Greater Pittsburgh Airport. From his bed at night, Griggs could see the planes take off from the end of the airport runway about 3,000 ft. from his house and head straight toward his window, and then rise in a scary whoosh about 150 ft. above his chimney. "I would be wakened and couldn't go back to sleep until the planes had stopped," he said. "When the windows were open...
...length, Griggs stuffed himself with sleeping pills and his ears with plugs, but it was no use. He finally leased a small cottage to which he and his wife retreated when they anticipated a busy night on the runway. A representative of the Airline Pilots Association further aggravated his fears with the admission that "in event of motor failure on takeoff, pilots would have no recourse but to plow into my house." In 1953 Griggs filed suit against the airport. In 1956 he sold his house and five acres to the St. Philip's Episcopal Church (whose congregation...
...ideal flying weather. The morning was dazzlingly clear, the ceiling and visibility unlimited, and a brisk, 20-mile-an-hour wind blew from the northwest. As New York waited to welcome Astronaut John Glenn, American Airlines' Flight One-nonstop to Los Angeles-screamed down the runway of International Airport at Idlewild, consuming a normal 5,000 feet of concrete before it left the ground in a perfect takeoff. Two minutes later, the flight of American One was over-and so were the lives of its 95 passengers and crew members. It was the worst tragedy involving a single plane...
...body across a 16-ft.-high bar. Aloft he is unusually graceful, clearing the crossbar with his feet tucked closely together, stomach sucked in, arms flung high over his head. Uelses never rests between vaults. He paces back and forth, stares up at the crossbar, tidies up the runway with a broom. "Mental attitude is the main thing," he says. "You can't let the bar beat you; you have to visualize yourself going over. It's a mental fight you have...