THE ordinary air traveler may get a glimpse of a control tower while taking off or landing: an area of greenish glass behind which moving figures are dimly visible. He may see radar antennas turning or catch a moment of radio chatter from the cockpit. He is comfortably aware that someone and something guides his plane, but he usually does not realize how vast and complicated that guidance process really is. To describe it in detail, TIME'S editors decided to use not only text but also ten pages of color photographs and maps, showing how a single flight is nursed from...
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