1987

Air Travel
How Safe Is It?
January 12, 1987

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Cover Story Excerpt:
The Northwest DC-10 was speeding toward takeoff at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport when the warning came from the flight engineer: "There's a whale on the runway!" Another Northwest wide-bodied DC-10 had just left a taxiway and poked its nose into the path of the oncoming plane. "I see it," replied the amazingly cool captain of the departing aircraft. He abruptly jerked his jumbo jet into the air. His wing cleared the fuselage of the crossing plane by a mere 50 ft. There were 501 people on the two jets. They had barely avoided what would have been the world's second worst air disaster, akin to the 1977 collision of two Boeing 747s that killed 582 people on a fog-shrouded runway at Tenerife in the Canary Islands...Read the full story