A Letter From The Publisher, Apr. 11, 1977

When an airline accident occurs, almost anywhere in the world, air-safety teams rush to the scene to begin a painstaking effort to establish the cause—and, where possible, to find ways of reducing the chances of similar tragedies. The probe of last week's collision of two 747 jumbo jets on a foggy runway in the Canary Islands may continue for months, as investigators question witnesses and survivors and study the tapes from the flight recorders that were on board both planes. In our cover stories this week we set ourselves a broader task: not only to piece together the narrative of the...

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