Word: tarmac
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...part of the history of JA8119 (the plane's serial number) particularly attracted the probers' attention. On June 2, 1978, the aircraft approached a landing at Osaka with its nose too high. The tail and the rear part of the fuselage slammed into the tarmac at 320 m.p.h.; the impact ripped aluminum skin panels from the belly of the plane. JA8119 was grounded for a month while Boeing engineers supervised repairs that included replacement of the lower part of the rear fuselage...
...small, unmanned vehicle barreled on minitank tracks across the tarmac, looking more like a playground toy than a sophisticated and lethal weapon of war. But as its six high-powered cameras and thermal-imaging night sight scanned the crowd and its menacing M-249 machine gun turned in search of targets, soldiers and civilians nervously scattered out of its path, just in case...
...Tenerife airport in the Canary Islands off Spain was sliced open without warning by a Dutch KLM jet that had come hurtling out of the fog at 160 m.p.h. The collision left twisted metal, along with comic books and toothbrushes, strewn along a half-mile stretch of tarmac. Everyone on the KLM jet was killed instantly. But it looked as if many of the Pan Am passengers had survived and would have lived if they had got up and walked off the fiery plane...
...turf and came down again a quarter-mile away, grazing one car on busy State Highway 114 and demolishing a second car, whose driver was decapitated. The plane skipped across a grassy field, ricocheted off a water tower, then burst into flames as it slid across the tarmac. "It was like a wall of napalm," said Airline Mechanic Jerry Maximoff. The tail section, with one of the plane's three engines and the last ten rows of seats, was the only recognizable part of the wreckage...
...propagandistic to me, but the fullness of its meaning will soon be made clear in unusual, very human terms. As I'd anticipated, they look shocked and want to hand me the bouquet, but I can't hold it and the crutches at the same time. Standing on the tarmac, they hold a quick conference in Vietnamese with numerous glances at my cast. I understand their concern: these are the people who will be responsible for my well-being over the next two weeks. Clearly my condition is worrisome...