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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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081489
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08148900.028
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1990-09-17
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NATION, Page 33American NotesTEXASRunway Rap Session
At another time and place the conversation might have been
considered typical banter among co-workers. As they prepared to
take off from Dallas last August, the crew of a Delta Air Lines
727 joked about subjects ranging from Marilyn Quayle's looks ("She
looks like she's from Texas. She's got that horseface") to Jesse
Jackson's presidential campaign ("It's scary that someone like that
could get as far as he did") to the power of the news media
("They're such vultures . . . they're too powerful") and the dating
habits of flight attendants ("In case we crash, so the media would
have some kind of a juicy tidbit"). Moments later, the plane
crashed, killing 14 people. The crew had apparently failed to
extend the aircraft's wing flaps properly.
The runway rap session came to light last week after a Dallas
TV station asked a state judge for a copy of the tape from the
plane's cockpit voice recorder. The National Transportation Safety
Board, which had released a highly censored transcript of the
conversation, asserted that disclosure of the entire conversation
might hamper investigations of airline disasters. The Air Line
Pilots Association warned that pilots might disable their voice
recorders to prevent future "invasion of their privacy" but later
added that legislation to ban the release of tapes might be
proposed instead. What jittery airline passengers were supposed to
make of the crew's chitchat, no one could say.