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From: james_n@ece.uwaterloo.ca (James Nicoll)
Subject: Re: Languages: Hard, Harder, Hardest
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Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 14:49:16 GMT
References: <4s9otl$1pt@dfw-ixnews6.ix.netcom.com> <4tcbj8$tb8@sonnet1.sonnet.com> <hatunenDv7w3n.HnK@netcom.com> <4thbg6$cc@nntp1.best.com>
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In article <4thbg6$cc@nntp1.best.com>,
Don HARLOW <don@donh.vip.best.com> wrote:

	snip

>During a TV discussion of the recent TWA crash off Long Island, the
>announcer mentioned the fact that the previous largest such air
>catastrophe in the United States, the crash of an Avianca airliner
>also near New York a few years, was due to the language problem. As I
>remember, the American ground controller was unable to understand the
>Colombian pilot's English.

	IMS, that  big crash in (um) Tenerife (sp?) in the 1970s involving
two 747s was also caused  in part by language problems. My  father (who
died soon after)  was supposed to *be* on that flight, but decided to take
a later flight for some  trivial  reason. He was somewhat miffed, since 
getting minced  on UW business would have doubled his  insurance and had
he paid for the ticket with his (Visa/Amex) card, he would have gotten
another hundred  grand, which would have pushed his  estate up well over
a million dollars, a figure which he  thought was  important.

							James Nicoll
-- 
" The moral, if you're a scholar don't pick up beautiful babes on deserted 
lanes at night.  Real Moral, Chinese ghost stories have mostly been written 
by scholars who have some pretty strange fantasies about women."
							Brian David Phillips  
