Word: weatherize
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Pilots know that weather causes about 40% of aircraft accidents and about 65% of air-traffic delays longer than 15 minutes. Thankfully, technology can defuse the threat. Doppler radar can predict and pinpoint rapid, dramatic shifts in wind by bouncing beacons off different air masses...
...radar system in early 1993. As an airport in the South (where wind shear is particularly common), it was No. 5 on the FAA list. But the inevitable delays, red tape and land squabbles pushed Charlotte to No. 38, leaving the USAir pilots defenseless against the weather...
...people died when an Avions de Transport regional plane, flown by American Eagle, crashed into a soybean field in Roselawn, Indiana. A design flaw made the French-Italian plane become violently uncontrollable in cold weather. Pilots and aeronautical engineers knew what the problem was: the de-icing boots on the ATR wings were not big enough. Those are the rubber sleeves on each wing that can be expanded to crack sheets of ice. But the FAA determined that lengthening the boot would cost too much money. It took three plane crashes, the third one scattering human remains and debris over...
...they didn't know how many accidents there had been. Taken aback, Weintrob and his team laid out details: In its short life, Valujet had had more than its share of accidents and mishaps. Its planes repeatedly overshot runways and suffered from collapsed landing gears. Planes took off in weather that kept pilots of other airlines on the ground. Fires broke out on planes. Engines exploded. In one blast, the engine spewed shrapnel into the fuselage of a plane, piercing the metal and injuring seven people inside...
Some of the stories, Weintrob recalled, were too outrageous to believe at first. Crews on a jet complained about a broken weather radar system 31 times before it was fixed; when a Boston flight had a stuck landing gear, the plane was diverted to the Washington area, but on the way, the landing gear started working again, so the crew continued to fly without taking the plane in to be serviced; mechanics used duct tape to patch planes; a mechanic wielded a hammer and chisel to fix a sensitive engine part, and later that engine had to be shut down...