Volume 46, Number 1 · January 14, 1999
Fear of Flying
By James Fallows
Inside the Sky: A Meditation on Flight
by William Langewiesche
Pantheon, 240 pp., $24.00
Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying
by Wolfgang Langewiesche
McGraw-Hill, 390 pp., $22.95
Nall Report: Accident Trends and Factors for 1996
by 1997 Air Safety Foundation, Airline Owners and Pilots Association
Just before dawn on Wednesday, October 13, 1998, a small single-engine plane took off from Montgomery County Airpark, twenty miles northwest of Washington, D.C. The plane was a Cessna 172 'Skyhawk'—an old-fashioned-looking craft, with its Spirit of St. Louis-style high-wing design. The Skyhawk is the most widely used training airplane because it is so stable and hard to mis-fly. This particular plane had a registration code on its tail ending with the letters 'KL,' and was called 'Kilo Lima,' for short, based on the words used by pilots to stand for letters of the alphabet. It was an adapted model with an extra-powerful engine and was used mainly to fly traffic reporters over the Washington Beltway for morning, midday, and evening 'drive-time' radio broadcasts on the congestion below.
Review, 4733 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |