Nation: Air Scares

Tail cone falls, flaps break

A sound like an explosion, a roar of wind—and horrified passengers stare at a circular 5-ft. hole in the rear of their Air Canada DC-9, 25,000 ft above the Atlantic. An American Airlines 707 loses a wing flap, which breaks into five pieces, two weighing more than 300 Ibs., over the Chicago suburb of Palatine. Another American 707 sheds the 11-in. by 13-ft. tip of a wing flap over San Francisco Bay. And federal investigators report that basic pilot errors committed by Yankee Catcher Thurman Munson caused his Cessna Citation I jet to crash at Akron-Canton airport...

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