Word: tarmac
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Gorbachev was met by Castro, and the two stood side by side on the tarmac as a military band played the anthems of their two countries...
...ordinary gesture to herald an extraordinary event. As a biting wind chilled the tarmac, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze walked down an airplane ramp, strode up to the man waiting to greet him and shook hands. His host was Qian Qichen, the Foreign Minister of China. After a long and bitter estrangement between the leviathans of the Communist world, Shevardnadze had come to Beijing to set a date for a meeting that would bring the two countries' leaders together for the first time in 30 years. Moscow and Beijing had reached the verge of something that eluded them even during...
Most experts give high marks to overall airport procedures at Heathrow, where officials have for years contended with the possibility of Irish Republican Army terrorism, and at Frankfurt. Others point out that no airport is completely safe. "Baggage control is pretty good at both Frankfurt and London, but tarmac security remains a weak spot everywhere," says an industry official. "A bomb with a timing device could have been put into the forward baggage hold." According to Pan Am officials, security was tightened after the airline received the FAA advisory, but they refused to say what was done...
...reason for the confusing signals from the control tower became clear once our plane touched down on the rain-drenched runway, littered with wind- blown bits of sagebrush. The narrow ribbon of tarmac at Zvartnots airfield looked like a crowded parking lot: an American military C-141, its tail marked with a large Stars and Stripes, an Algerian transport plane, a commercial Austrian airliner -- in all, about 15 foreign planes, not counting a regular fleet of Soviet Ilyushin 76s and Tupelev 154s. Hundreds of dark-clad figures milled about. The usual tight military control that exists at every Soviet airport...
...point, ambulances suddenly raced in a pack down the tarmac. More survivors had arrived from Leninakan, their clothing still caked with dried mud. A young woman bundled in a green checkered blanket stared listlessly from a stretcher. Others exited on crutches or took their own shaky steps down the stairs of the Tupelev 154, dazed by the crowd of white-coated medics and the flashing lights of the waiting emergency vehicles...