Word: tarmac
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Being trapped in an airplane is a miserable experience. Being trapped in an airplane and knowing that every second you sit motionless on the tarmac represents a missed meeting, a lost client, or a wasted business opportunity is sheer torture. No one knows that sinking feeling better than the millions of American business travelers who take to the air each year, many of whom have spent this summer stuck in airports, guzzling Maalox and waiting out a record number of delays and cancelations...
After the landing, he peers out the window at some military brass and a few aides who are waiting to receive him. The Mercedes is there on the tarmac too. Saying goodbye, he goes into the cockpit to thank the pilots for the safe trip and then bounds down the steps. Within seconds he's behind the wheel again and spinning into town...
President Mohammed Khatami strides across the Mehrabad Airport tarmac to the salute of soldiers in ceremonial sashes. Mullahs in dark robes, bearded aides in suits with tieless shirts and militiamen carrying Kalashnikovs trail him up to Iran's equivalent of Air Force One--an old American-made Boeing 707 from before the Islamic Revolution. In minutes he is roaring off to a speech--it is an anniversary in the Iran-Iraq war--near the Iraqi border. There is no mistaking Khatami when he slips back from the front of the plane, wandering down through a cabin decorated in late-1970s...
...Unfortunately, another passenger spotted him. Flight attendants ejected him from the plane and delivered him to airport police, who handcuffed him on the tarmac. He was arrested for trespassing and disorderly conduct...
...true hopes for his son because Fidel Castro had him in chains. But once he broke free and made it to America, once he stepped off the Learjet at Dulles at dawn with his new wife and baby at his side, he would fall to the ground, kiss the tarmac and ask for asylum. Or maybe it would happen Friday morning, safe in the halls of the Justice Department, when he would look Attorney General Janet Reno in the eye and say thanks for all the help, but can we please just stay here? Then he could arrive in Miami...