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;void(0)) . . . AIR FORCE see "WAR & PEACE" for related links Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. (on the skill and courage of British airmen] --Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [1940-1945, 1951-1955]. [Speech, House of Commons, 20 August 1940].  ;void(0)) AIR TRAVEL . . see "TRAVEL" for related links My inclination to go by Air Express is confirmed by the crash they had yesterday, which will make them careful in the immediate future. --A.E. [Alfred Edward] Houseman (1859-1936) English classical scholar and poet. Letter [17 August 1920]. I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me they are wonderful things for other people to go on. --Jean Kerr (1923-2003) American writer, [wife of Walter Kerr]. _The Snake Has All the Lines_ [1958] Anything that is white is sweet. Anything that is brown is meat. Anything that is grey, don't eat. --Stephen Sondheim (1930- ) American musical theater lyricist and composer. {On airline food.} "Do I Hear a Waltz?" [1965 song]. There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror. --Orson Welles (1915-1985) American motion-picture actor, director, producer, and writer. Interview in "The Times" [6 May 1985]. --- Revisiting the Grand Canyon Crash 50 Years Later TWA, United Collision Killed 128, Spawned FAA; Lessons for Today's Skies _The Wall Street Journal_ June 20, 2006 On a Saturday morning in June, Trans World Airways Flight 2 departed Los Angeles International Airport for Kansas City, Mo., and three minutes later United Airlines Flight 718 took off from the same airport for Chicago. About 90 minutes later, they collided over the Grand Canyon, killing 128 people. The Grand Canyon crash, 50 years ago next week but still vividly remembered by many, was the worst in aviation history at the time, and it remains one of the most important in terms of triggering safety enhancements for travelers. Even today, the lessons learned from that tragedy resonate with the challenges faced in the skies as the U.S. once again struggles to modernize air-traffic control. Now, as then, skies are getting more crowded as new types of planes open up travel, from regional airline planes to corporate jets to a coming influx of "very light jets" designed to carry only six people. Now, as then, the federal government is scrambling to modernize air-traffic control to increase capacity. It's a project already many years in the making, and many years from completion, but the Federal Aviation Administration says it is making progress. The June 30, 1956, crash spurred development of a nationwide system of radar coverage and led to the creation of the FAA. It was a huge advance, and just in time, historians say, since near misses in the skies were already rapidly rising and passenger jets flying twice as fast as the propeller-driven planes of the day were about to start entering service. "The crash very conceivably saved a lot of lives," says Jon Proctor, an aviation historian and editor of Airliners magazine. In 1956, there was no radar coverage of the skies outside of urban areas. As planes flew along, they reported their position and altitude by radio and estimated their arrival time at the next checkpoint. Controllers kept track on paper, or by moving markers across tabletops as if they were game pieces. Pilots flying by instruments had to stay on prescribed airways -- like highways in the sky. But if you weren't in the clouds, you could go off the airways and fly under visual rules -- when pilots were responsible for seeing and avoiding other airplanes. That's what both planes, both flown by veteran pilots, were doing. TWA Flight 2, a Lockheed Constellation, took off at 9:01 a.m., planning to cruise at 19,000 feet with 70 people on board. At about 9:04 a.m., United Flight 718, a Douglas DC-7, took off with 58 people on board after filing a flight plan to cruise at 21,000 feet. About 20 minutes into its flight, the TWA plane requested permission to climb to 21,000 feet. An air-traffic controller in Los Angeles denied the request because of the United plane at 21,000 feet. TWA Flight 2 then requested clearance to stay 1,000 feet on top of the clouds -- a common practice at the time. The request was approved. At 9:59 a.m., Flight 2 reported its position and said it was 1,000 feet on top of the clouds at 21,000 feet and would reach the Painted Desert reporting line at 10:31 a.m. A minute earlier, United 718 reported that it was at 21,000 feet and would reach Painted Desert at 10:31 a.m. Same altitude; same time. Both reports were relayed to a controller in Salt Lake City, but since both planes were flying under visual rules, the controller wasn't required to warn either plane they were likely on converging courses. He didn't. [ . . . ] ;void(0)) AIRPLANES . . see "TRAVEL" for related links We were one of those wretched traveling families you see getting on planes - the kind where you don't actually see the people, just this mound of baby equipment shufling slowly down the aisle toward you. This sight is always hugely popular with the other passengers, some of whom will yank open the emergency exits and dive out of the plane. Because they know what babies do on planes: They stand on their parents' laps and stick their heads up over the seats, so they can get maximum range when they shriek. On a baby-intensive airplane, you see shrieking baby heads constantly popping up all over, like prairie dogs from hell. --Dave Barry (1947- ) American humorist. - Given the national mood, it was only appropriate that suddenly, in 1927, the overnight hero of the world was an American. On a drizzly May morning, an airplane lined up on a muddy, primitive runway on Long Island. It was going for a shot at a $25,000 prize for a nonstop transatlantic flight. Of the three contenders, one was both the strangest and the smallest: it was twenty-seven feet, three inches long, had no radio and no sextant, and its instrument panel was less pretentious than that of a 1927 automobile. It had cost $10,580, and every inch of its construction had been carefully watched over by the man who was going to fly it; unlike the others he was going alone, and he did not intend to hop islands or countries, he was going for the whole stretch-New York to Paris. He was a skinny, blond twenty-five-year-old from Minnesota, who had been a parachute jumper and an airmail pilot in the wildcat days. The plane--which for balance carried all the gasoline it could in a cased-in cockpit up front, so that the pilot was literally flying blind--wobbled and bounced into the heavy skies, and that night forty thousand baseball fans in New York stood and prayed for its pilot. In Tokyo, at their midnight, people swarmed into the streets. The stock exchanges of London, Berlin, and Amsterdam interrupted regular quotations with the word--that there was no word. As the second night came on in Paris, an appeal went out to everybody who owned an automobile--which might be from seventy to eighty thousand, maybe--to head for a landing field at Le Bourget and line up in two files, switch the headlights on and thus create a visible shaft of white fog. Into it, thirty-three hours after just missing the telephone wires on Long Island, the strange plane trundled and stopped. It was engulfed by one hundred thousand Parisians. When they lifted the pilot out of the cockpit, if he had said he was Alexander the Great, they'd have believed him. He reportedly said simply: "I am Charles Lindbergh." He came home to naval salutes and a frenetic press, and a ticker-tape parade up Broadway. --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (1908-2004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _America_ [1973] - If God had intended us to fly, he'd never have given us the railways. --Flanders & Swann Musical duo who performed comic and satirical songs. "By Air" [1963] I like terra firma - the more firma, the less terra. --George S. Kaufman (1889-1961) American playwright, director, and producer. I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on. --Jean Kerr (1923-2003) American writer, [wife of Walter Kerr]. _The Snake Has All the Lines_ [1958] Flights by machine heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible. --Simon Newcomb (1835-1909) Canadian-born American astronomer and mathematician. (Eighteen months before the Wright brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk.) Success. Four flights Thursday morning. All against twenty-one mile wind. Started from level with engine power alone. Average speed through air thirty-one miles. Longest fifty-nine seconds. Inform press. Home Christmas. --Wilbur Wright (1867-1912) and Orville Wright (1871-1948) Designed the first airplane. (Telegram to the Reverend Milton Wright, from Kitty Hawk, N.C. [17 December 1903]). - On April 25, 1974, the "Toronto Star" reported the deaths of Mr. Todd Missfield and Ms. Bonnie Johnson who died when their Cessna 150 airplane crashed into a billboard. The message on the billboard read: "Learn to Fly." ----- jetsam (noun) ['jet-sêm] cargo thrown out of a ship or plane to lighten it. end page | ABILITY - ABUSE | ACADEMY AWARDS - ACCUSTOMED | ACHIEVEMENT - ACTING | ACTIONS | ACTORS | ACTUARIES - ADVERSARIES | ADVERSITY - ADVERTISING | ADVICE | AFFAIRS - AFGHANISTAN | AGE | AGNOSTICS & AGREEMENT | AIR FORCE - AIRPLANES | ALCOHOL | ALIBI - AMBITION | AMERICA | AMERICANS | AMERICAN INDIANS | AMERICAN REVOLUTION | AMUSEMENT - ANCESTORS | ANGER | ANIMAL RIGHTS & ANIMALS | ANIMOSITIES - APATHY | APOLOGY & APPEARANCE | APPEASEMENT | APPLAUSE - APRIL | ARCHAEOLOGISTS - ARCHITECTURE | ARGUMENT | ARISTOCRACY - ART | ASHAMED - ASTROLOGY | ATHEISM | ATOM BOMB - ATTRACTION | AUSTRALIA | AUTHORITY & AUTOMOBILES | AUTHORS & AUTOBIOGRAPHY | AUTUMN - AVIATION | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | |
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