Word: vortexes
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...idea to let Cruise vanish for almost an hour in the middle of his picture. But by then the film's central flaw has been exposed. A vampire story needs vampires, sure, but it also needs a human victim to lead the audience into the vortex and help them escape it. Otherwise, the fear factor evaporates, and you get this mishmash: an interview in a void, a vampire movie with underbite...
...evidence supporting the wake-vortex theory is thin. As Flight 427 approached the airport, it was following a Delta Airlines 727, a heavier Boeing plane that generates a slightly stronger wake. Flight 427 trailed the other jet by 4.1 nautical miles, well within the FAA regulation that requires two planes of such weights to maintain a separation of 3 nautical miles. If the 727 wake did jostle the 737 sufficiently to contribute to the latter's plunge, it would be a first. While 727s were the lead craft in seven of the 52 wake-vortex encounters documented by the NTSB...
...Safety Board's most recent warning about wake vortex, issued in February, concentrates on the turbulence stirred by the heavier 757, whose wake has upset or downed seven planes -- among them a 737. The NTSB called upon the FAA to reclassify the 757 so that other craft must follow at greater distances during takeoffs and landings. The FAA has yet to act. Canada, however, upped the classification of the 757 from "large" to "heavy" earlier this year; Britain made a similar change last year by carving out a new category to accommodate...
...safety watchdogs have been frustrated by the FAA's slow response to their repeated calls over the years for rules requiring pilots to report wake- vortex incidents more thoroughly. "The FAA has got to develop a sense of urgency where wake-vortex phenomena are concerned," says Jerome Lederer, founder of the Flight Safety Foundation in Arlington, Virginia. At the same time, however, the FAA has been urged by cash-strapped airlines to reduce the separation distances between landing airplanes so that carriers can turn the planes around faster to make more flights...
Long paralyzed by these competing demands, the FAA is at last responding to safety concerns. Last month the agency established a special office that will devise a system to catalog and analyze turbulence data. Prodded by other organizations in the flying community, pilots have begun reporting about five wake-vortex incidents a month. Participants predict that a more complete network, which is expected to be operating by next February, will catalog quite a few more...