In Flight

TWA Express Flight 7358 was accelerating down the runway when the warning light flashed: trouble with the left engine.The pilot safely stopped the 9-passenger turboprop on the runway, but it would not be the last time for this aircraft. It would happen again the next day, three more times within the month and twice the month after.All told, that TWA Express plane would abort seven takeoffs within two months because of the same mechanical failure. There would be six unsuccessful repair attempts before mechanics found the cause -- a bad fuel valve.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Passengers on JetBlue Airways get an odd gift at the end of each flight: the flimsy but efficient enough headphones they used on the trip. Flight attendants call the stereo headsets a "souvenir." A company representative (OK, a flight attendant) explains that discarding headphones after a single use and buying new ones is cheaper than cleaning the blue foam earpieces. Cutting costs and thinking outside the box are what JetBlue wants to be all about. It's been called the most successful airline start-up in a generation.

LATELY THERE'S BEEN a lot of talk about an Air Traveler's Bill of Rights. This idea got a big push in January, when a snowstorm forced some loaded planes to sit out on the Detroit airport runway for as long as eight hours, during which several passengers were eaten by wolves.This incident provoked national criticism of the airline involved, which I will not identify here other than to call it The Diametrically Opposite of Southeast Airlines. In its defense, the airline issued the following statement:"We are experiencing mechanical difficulties with our statement."

Landing Freewing Aircraft's new production plant at Carroll County Regional Airport is an important accomplishment for the county's economic development effort. The company, which has come up with a revolutionary wing for light aircraft and unmanned drones, should prove to be a significant addition to the industrial center sprouting up around the airport.Freewing's relocation decision is an example of state and local governments working to foster new enterprises that create jobs. A product of the University of Maryland's high-tech incubator program, Freewing revisited some old ideas about wing design that had been ignored for decades.

NEW YORK -- It is early Sunday morning a few weeks before Thanksgiving, in front of Macy's on Herald Square. Manny Bass, Macy's head balloon designer -- master of "cold air inflatables" as he calls them -- is overseeing the test flight of his latest creation.Dudley the Dragon, a 60-foot replica of the character from the children's show on PBS, is lying flat as a pancake on a tarp spread across Broadway, ready to be inflated. Mr. Bass, a handsome man of 60 with snow-white hair and twinkling light-blue eyes, excitedly traverses the edge of the tarp, advising the staff on the helium truck and instructing new balloon handlers.

Although it took 47 years, a World War II bomber pilot from Nebraska finally got to thank a fighter pilot from Towson for saving his life in the sky over Germany.It was March 21, 1945, and smoke from the massive bomb bursts plumed skyward from the German city of Plauen as an armada of B-17 Flying Fortresses turned for home in Britain.Suddenly, at more than 500 miles an hour, a twin-engine German ME262, the world's first jet fighter, zoomed through the formation with machine guns blazing, blasting one B-17 out of the sky. Lt. Richard L. Roberts, in the pilot's seat of another B-17, could only watch helplessly.

COLORA - Marcia Thompson Eldreth sees in the United States a Christian nation, inspired by Scripture and dedicated to propositions conveyed in biblical prophesy. She asks: Why not a U.S. national Christian flag? "Our nation was based on Judeo-Christian principles," Eldreth said. "Blessed is the country whose God is Lord." She was sitting in her Cecil County kitchen here the other day, sharing the story of how she came to design and arrange for manufacturing and selling a national Christian flag that since last year has gained national attention on The 700 Club, a religious news magazine television show hosted by, among others, the Rev. Pat Robertson.

Richard Duckett King, a retired Navy commander who flew nuclear weapons to aircraft carriers and later taught physics and oceanography at area schools, died Saturday of a lung disorder at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. He was 83. A resident of the Blakehurst Life Care Community in Towson, he formerly resided for 29 years in the Stoneleigh neighborhood. Born in Baltimore and raised on Longwood Road in Roland Park, Cmdr. King was a 1937 graduate of Polytechnic Institute, where he was class president and captain of the wrestling team.

For years, Charles J. Cignatta's "office" was the cockpit of chase planes high over the Chesapeake Bay, where he filmed the dips and rolls of aircraft going through their paces after emerging from the Glenn L. Martin Co. plant in Middle River.Mr. Cignatta, who spent a nearly five-decade career with the manufacturer of airplanes and spacecraft, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at Franklin Woods Center-Genesis Eldercare. The Essex resident was 85.Armed with his heavy Speed Graphic or Aeroflex movie camera, Mr. Cignatta photographed Martin Co. projects, from World War II-era bombers and seaplanes to jets and missiles and even the installation of a nuclear power plant at the South Pole.