Airplane

WASHINGTON -- Almost everybody knows what became of the Wright Flyer and the Spirit of St. Louis. They hang with other aviation treasures in the hallowed galleries of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.But what about the Flying Wing, the forerunner of the stealth bomber? Or the last surviving Aichi Seran, a Japanese floatplane that was folded up and carried inside a submarine? Or the Caroline, the turbo-prop airplane that John F. Kennedy used as his campaign aircraft?They are gathering dust in the darkness of drafty tin sheds in a rundown neighborhood in nearby Suitland.

1947: First supersonic airplane1947: Bell Labs invents transistor1947: Polaroid camera developed1948: Israel created

SEATTLE -- Boeing Co. named General Motors Corp.'s Deborah Hopkins as chief financial officer, hiring from an industry that the jet maker hopes to emulate as it modernizes its production lines and overhauls accounting practices.Hopkins, 44, vice president for finance at GM's European unit, will start Dec. 14 and will be the highest-ranking female executive ever at the world's biggest plane maker. Hopkins replaces Boyd Givan, 62, who said in July that he would retire.The appointment of an outsider is rare for Boeing, which is trying to remake production lines in the mold of carmakers like GM.Boeing last year suffered its first annual loss in five decades and has racked up $3 billion in production-related costs since October 1997.

Jerry Seinfeld may have starred in the show about "nothing," but the guy notices everything.Razor blade dispensers in airplane bathrooms, the abundance of consonants in New York cabbies' names ...These are just a couple of the random details the former sitcom sultan addresses in his CD, "I'm Telling You For the Last Time."The CD is a recording of the live stand-up act the cereal-obsessed comedian performed on Broadway shortly after "Seinfeld" went off the air.It's clear from the material that Seinfeld's eyes and mind are working constantly.

WHEN IT comes to airline travel, the old saying is true: There's no hell like having a baby sitting near you.I was reminded of this when a baby sat in front of me on a recent flight to the Midwest.OK, I say sat. Actually the baby was perched over his father's shoulder facing me. Which meant his fat, little drool-covered face was about 6 inches from mine.Now, normally I have no problem with drooling babies, figuring drooling is simply their occupational hazard.But I sure had a problem with this baby.

SEATTLE -- Boeing Co., showing how badly it was caught off guard by the global boom in aircraft orders, said yesterday that it will halt production of its 747 and 737 jetliners for about three weeks to catch up with crippling labor and parts shortages.The moves mean that the world's largest airplane maker will deliver about 335 jets this year, down from the 350 earlier estimated, and that fourth-quarter earnings will be lower than expected.Boeing's drastic measures indicate that its production problems are far more severe than executives had let on, analysts said.

NEW YORK -- Unraveling the mystery of the crash of TWA flight 800 is as sophisticated as a high-tech underwater device being shipped to the scene to listen for the electronic beep of the missing flight data recorder.And it's as simple as investigators knocking on doors along the Long Island coastline to ask if anyone saw anything unusual in the sky.Pursuing everything from hunches to twisted hunks of airplane fuselage resting 120 feet under water, investigators have opened their inquiry on seemingly countless fronts in the 48 hours since the 747 airliner apparently exploded and crashed in the ocean nine miles from the shore on Wednesday night.

Children will not be permitted to sit in booster seats, harnesses or safety vests aboard airplanes after Sept. 3. The Federal Aviation Administration issued its rule this month, to take effect in 90 days.This action follows Civil Aeromedical Institute tests that found backless booster seats and harnesses did not offer children the protection in airplane seats that they offered in automobile seats.Approved child safety seats with backs and sides that belt into an airplane seat continue to be acceptable despite inadequacies tests found with some forward-facing models.

SMITHTOWN, N.Y. -- Federal investigators have created a sophisticated computer simulation of the final moments of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 showing that almost everything in the first spray of metal, luggage, and other material blown from the airplane came from one confined area on the right side of the jet, above and ahead of the wing.The investigators say this simulation, a standard part of crash investigations, has helped them visualize the probable focal point of the explosion that split the plane.

I am feeling great, and I will tell you why. It's because of this article I read recently that said ... um ... it said ... OK, wait just a minute while I get out this article. ...OK, here it is: According to this article, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania did a study showing that, as males -- but not females -- get older, their brains shrink. Was I ever relieved to read that! I thought it was just me!Here's something I regularly do: I'm walking through an airport, and I see a newsstand, and I think: "Huh!

An airplane carrying Johns Hopkins coach Dave Pietramala and offensive coordinator Bobby Benson from Sunday's NCAA tournament quarterfinal at Cornell University to Baltimore was forced to turn back after one of the plane's doors flew open in midflight. Pietramala said he lost a jacket and some papers in the incident, which occurred about 3,000 feet in the air shortly after the airplane had left the Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport at 4:15 p.m. "All of a sudden you hear, `Bang!' and the door flies wide open," Pietramala recalled.

Was there really a time when people looked forward to traveling at the holidays? It seems impossible to imagine, but back in Ye Olde Yuletide - if we can believe the lyrics of a certain song, that is - the year's-end trip was a joyful journey "over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go." Times change. Now it is to Grandmother's house we groan, as we shiver barefoot in long airport security lines, endure mysterious flight delays and sniff our kneecaps at 35,000 feet because the airplane's seats are crammed closer than Santa's reindeer.

Hans Dietrich Heyck, a design engineer and fan of vintage airplanes, died Wednesday of a stroke at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The longtime resident of Phoenix, Baltimore County, was 84. Mr. Heyck was born and raised in Paehl, Germany. He was drafted into the Germany army in 1942 and was captured while serving in Tunisia. He was sent to prisoner-of-war camps in Kentucky and Oklahoma before being repatriated in 1945. Mr. Heyck completed his training as a design engineer at the Munich Technical Institute and in 1954 immigrated to Winchester, Mass.

Ariz. man charged in airplane incident A 34-year-old Arizona man was charged by federal prosecutors yesterday with assaulting two flight attendants on an America West airplane en route from Phoenix to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Bryan Leon Spann was charged in a criminal information with two counts of assault on the attendants, Timothy Brennan and Amelia Ann Hass, who were working March 10 on Flight 81. Prosecutors said Spann became "loud, belligerent and combative" during the flight and struck a crew member in the right eye with a closed fist, and then hit the other.

Almanac Nov. 29--1929 Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd radioed that he'd made the first airplane flight over the South Pole.

Window Seat: Reading the Landscape from the Air, by Gregory Dicum. Chronicle Books. 175 pages. $14.95. Overriding current anxieties of commercial flying, Dicum celebrates the joys available by choosing the window seat. "The food might be utilitarian, the seat cramped, and your neighbor annoying," Dicum writes. "But the sheer pleasure of contemplating our planet from 35,000 feet (about 6.5 mi., or 10.7 km) in the air is worth any price. A century ago, nobody on Earth could have hoped to see this view."

One in a series of occasional articles With the luster of its potential tarnished by a century of use, it now seems odd to think of the airplane as anything more than a convenient way to get from one city or country to another. But at the turn of the century, some believed that the technology was capable of bringing about profound social change, including promoting greater equality for women and African-Americans. The notion gained proponents among a smattering of women and black pilots during the "Golden Age of Aviation" - a 20-year period between the two world wars when aviation was in its infancy and flying machines were wondrous.

Part visionary and part showman, Glenn Luther Martin built his first airplane in 1910 in an abandoned California church, taught himself how to fly and went on to become one of the 20th century's aviation and industrial icons. Martin would, by age 22, own an airplane plant. To hype sales, he claimed he was the first pilot to take his mother aloft. He also delivered newspapers from the air and hunted coyotes from his cockpit, landing once with one of the animals bagged and tied to the wing of a biplane.

We think of war and we think of airplanes. But when Orville and Wilbur Wright invented the airplane a century ago, they did not envision massive aerial bombardments of "shock and awe." In fact, the Ohio brothers once thought their invention would become the great deterrent to warfare. It was an idea shared by many after the inception of flight. War would become practically impossible, the brothers thought, because the scouting done by aircraft would equalize opposing nations with information on each other's movements, preventing surprise attacks.

DAVID WAINLAND knew he wanted to be an airplane pilot when he was only 8 years old. When Daniel Steciak was 11, he read a magazine article about military careers that captured his imagination. Both young men joined the Howard County Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP). A civilian auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force, CAP offers training programs for "cadets," ages 12 to 21, and "senior members," 21 and older. Leadership skills, search-and-rescue exercises, physical fitness and flying airplanes are all part of the program's allure.