Airport [antikvár]

1 At half-past six on a Friday evening in January, Lincoln International Airport, Illinois, was functioning, though with difficulty. The airport was reeling—as was the entire Midwestern United States—from the meanest, roughest winter storm in half a dozen years. The storm had lasted three days. Now, like pustules on a battered, weakened body, trouble spots were erupting steadily. A United Air Lines food truck, loaded with two hundred dinners, was lost and presumably snowbound somewhere on the airport perimeter. A search for the truck—in driving snow and darkness-had so far failed to locate either the missing vehicle or its driver. United s Flight 111—a non-stop DC-8 for Los Angeles, which the food tmck was to service—was already several hours behind schedule. The food snafu would make it later still. Similar delays, for varying reasons, were affecting at least a hundred flights of twenty other airlines using Lincoln International. Out on the airfield, runway three zero was out of use, blocked by an Aereo-Mexican jet—a Boeing 707—its wheels deeply mired in waterlogged ground beneath snow, near the runway's edge. Two hours of intensive effort had failed to get the big jet moved. Now, Aereo-Mexican, having exhausted its own local resources, had appealed to TWA for help. Air Traffic Control, hampered by the loss of runway three zero, had instituted flow control procedures, limiting the volume of in-