Читать книгу Аэропорт / Аirport онлайн | страница 3

Mel picked up a direct line phone to Air Traffic Control.

“What’s the story on that Aéreo-Mexican 707?”

“Still there, Mr. Bakersfeld. They’ve been working a couple of hours trying to move it. No luck yet.”

That trouble had begun when an Aéreo-Mexican captain, taxiing out for takeoff, mistakenly passed to the right. Unfortunately, the ground to the right had a drainage problem. Within seconds of its wrong-way turn, the hundred and twenty ton aircraft was deeply mired in the mud.

When it became obvious that the aircraft could not get out, loaded, under its own power, the passengers were disembarked and helped to hastily hired buses. Now, more than two hours later, the big jet was still stuck, its fuselage and tail blocking runway three zero.

“Right now we’re holding ten flights for taxi clearance, another dozen waiting to start engines.”

It was a demonstration, Mel reflected, of how urgently the airport needed additional runways and taxiways. For three years he had been urging construction of a new runway to parallel three zero, as well as other operational improvements. But the Board of Airport Commissioners, under political pressure from downtown, refused to approve.

“The other thing,” the tower watch chief said, “is that with three zero out of use, we’re having to route takeoffs over Meadowood. The complaints have started coming in already.”

Mel groaned. Though the airport had been established long before the community, Meadowood’s residents complained bitterly about noise from aircraft. Eventually, after long negotiations involving politics and publicity, the airport had conceded that jet takeoffs and landings directly over Meadowood would be made only when essential in special circumstances.

Moreover, it was also agreed that aircraft taking off toward Meadowood would— almost at once after becoming airborne—follow noise abatement procedures. This produced protests from pilots, who considered the procedures dangerous. The airlines, however, had ordered the pilots to conform. Yet Meadowood residents were still protesting, organizing, and planning legal harassment of the airport.