Word: takeoff
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...takeoff on 1930s movie musicals. Using Grauman's Chinese Theater as aspic, it captures the clichés, the formulas, the juicily idiotic emotional punch lines of the period. Singing with slyly ironic comic abandon, Jeanette MacDonald (Peggy Hewett) fondles a life-size cardboard cutout of Nelson Eddy, never the most mobile of performers...
October 1977: Four terrorists hijacked a Lufthansa jet with 86 aboard after takeoff from Majorca, demanding ransom money and the release of leaders of the Baader-Meinhof gang from West German prisons. The terrorists made several refueling stops and finally landed at Mogadishu, Somalia, where West German commandos stormed the plane and rescued the hostages; three terrorists were killed...
...morning for an unscheduled flight to Havana. Among the passengers were twelve diplomatic hostages, including U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Diego Asencio, and 15 armed members of the so-called M-19 guerrilla group. Four other diplomats and two Colombian civilians had been allowed to leave the plane minutes before takeoff; the remaining hostages were to be liberated upon arrival in Cuba, where President Fidel Castro had offered sanctuary to the terrorists. Thus ended the 61-day siege at the Dominican Republic embassy in Colombia's capital, raided during a diplomatic reception on February 27 by terrorists who demanded...
Shortly before takeoff, the freed Ambassadors of Venezuela, Israel, Egypt and the Dominican Republic descended the steps of the four-engine Soviet-built Ilyushin jetliner and were driven across the airfield in a speeding bus. One of them, Dominican Ambassador Diogenes Mallol, praised Colombian President Julio César Turbay Ayala for handling "this problem with prudence and calm," adding that "only in the beginning were we in danger because the terrorists were very nervous. Then everything calmed down." Another, Venezuelan Ambassador Virgilio Lovera, jubilantly told reporters: "I feel like running a mile in the Olympics...
...again. A year ago, the line's cut-rate, $99 coast-to-coast flights were soaring at 80% capacity, when the grounding of all DC-10s after the American Airlines crash in Chicago idled its cross-country fleet. As soon as the DC-10s were again cleared for takeoff, the line was hit by a four-month strike of pilots, mechanics and stewardesses demanding higher pay. Since World finally got back in the air last January, an average of only 17% of its seats have been full. The airline decided that it needed some gimmick to win back...