Airport Runway Quotes

Extending the Airport Runway The good citizens of the commission cast their votes for more of everything. Very early in the morning I go out to the pale dunes, to look over the empty spaces of the wilderness. For something is there, something is there when nothing is there but itself, that is not there when anything else is. Alas, the good citizens of the commission have never seen it, whatever it is, formless, yet palpable. Very shining, very delicate. Very rare.

Your mind is like a runway on airport. It can launch you in the sky so that you can fly to your desired destination. But you have become so attached to the airport that you are using the runway as a road to drive around.

Baby smuggling is a serious crime,' he said. 'There were thirty-six babies on that plane. We could charge you with thirty-six counts of kidnapping.' That, at least, got Second to look back at Mr. Reardon. 'Does FBI mean Federal Bureau of Idiots?' he asked. 'If any of you were any good at analyzing footprints, you would know that I fell when I was trying to sneak into the airport grounds, not out.' 'And why would you do that?' Mr. Reardon asked, hunching forward over a notepad. 'It was a dare, all right?' Second snarled. 'I was with my friends and we were talking about what it would be like to stand on a runway when a plane was landing and...we decided to try it out.' 'That's a crime too,' Mr. Reardon said. Second shrugged. 'It ain't thirty-six counts of kidnapping,' he said.

Finding a taxi, she felt like a child pressing her nose to the window of a candy store as she watched the changing vista pass by while the twilight descended and the capital became bathed in a translucent misty lavender glow. Entering the city from that airport was truly unique. Charles de Gaulle, built nineteen miles north of the bustling metropolis, ensured that the final point of destination was veiled from the eyes of the traveller as they descended. No doubt, the officials scrupulously planned the airport’s location to prevent the incessant air traffic and roaring engines from visibly or audibly polluting the ambience of their beloved capital, and apparently, they succeeded. If one flew over during the summer months, the visitor would be visibly presented with beautifully managed quilt-like fields of alternating gold and green appearing as though they were tilled and clipped with the mathematical precision of a slide rule. The countryside was dotted with quaint villages and towns that were obviously under meticulous planning control. When the aircraft began to descend, this prevailing sense of exactitude and order made the visitor long for an aerial view of the capital city and its famous wonders, hoping they could see as many landmarks as they could before they touched ground, as was the usual case with other major international airports, but from this point of entry, one was denied a glimpse of the city below. Green fields, villages, more fields, the ground grew closer and closer, a runway appeared, a slight bump or two was felt as the craft landed, and they were surrounded by the steel and glass buildings of the airport. Slightly disappointed with this mysterious game of hide-and-seek, the voyager must continue on and collect their baggage, consoled by the reflection that they will see the metropolis as they make their way into town. For those travelling by road, the concrete motorway with its blue road signs, the underpasses and the typical traffic-logged hubbub of industrial areas were the first landmarks to greet the eye, without a doubt, it was a disheartening first impression. Then, the real introduction began. Quietly, and almost imperceptibly, the modern confusion of steel and asphalt was effaced little by little as the exquisite timelessness of Parisian heritage architecture was gradually unveiled. Popping up like mushrooms were cream sandstone edifices filigreed with curled, swirling carvings, gently sloping mansard roofs, elegant ironwork lanterns and wood doors that charmed the eye, until finally, the traveller was completely submerged in the glory of the Second Empire ala Baron Haussmann’s master plan of city design, the iconic grand mansions, tree-lined boulevards and avenues, the quaint gardens, the majestic churches with their towers and spires, the shops and cafés with their colourful awnings, all crowded and nestled together like jewels encrusted on a gold setting.

Sources of economic growth are all completely destroyed – the airport (runways demolished, totally closed); the border for trade with Egypt (now with a sniper tower in the middle of the crossing); access to the ocean (completely cut off in the last two years ).

In May 1993, Clinton ordered the presidential plane to wait on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport while he got a haircut from Christophe Schatteman, a Beverly Hills hairdresser. Schatteman’s clients have included Nicole Kidman, Goldie Hawn, and Steven Spielberg. “We flew out of San Diego to L.A. to pick him up,” recalls James Saddler, a steward on the infamous trip. “Some guy came out and said he was supposed to cut the president’s hair. Christophe cut his hair, and we took off. We were on the ground for an hour. They closed the runways.” While Christophe cut Clinton’s hair, two runways at LAX were closed. That meant all incoming and outgoing flights had to be halted. Clinton’s thoughtlessness inconvenienced passengers throughout the country. Like

Now it was dark. The airplane descended over Chicago, its galaxy of electric lights, the vast neighborhoods coming clearer as the plane glided toward the airport--streetlights, headlights, stacks of buildings, ice rinks, a truck turning at a stoplight, scraps of snow atop a warehouse and winking antennae on faraway hills, finally the long converging parallels of blue runway lights, and they were down.

The native islanders had never seen an airplane before, or met people such as these strangers. In return for use of their land, the strangers provided mechanical birds that flew in and out all day long on a “runway,” bringing incredible material wealth to their island home. The strangers mentioned something about war and fighting. One day it was over and they all left, taking their strange riches with them. The islanders were desperate to restore their good fortunes, and re-built a facsimile of the airport, control tower, and equipment using local materials: vines, coconut shells, palm fronds, and such. But for some reason, even though they had everything in place, the planes didn’t come. They had imitated the form, but not the content. Anthropologists call this a cargo cult. All too often, we are the islanders.

authorities were less vigilant during a storm. Even so, he was nervous. He had flown in to Cuba many times. But never here. And tonight he would have preferred to have been going almost anywhere else. Cayo Esqueleto. Skeleton Key. There it was, stretching out before him, twenty-five miles long and six miles across at its widest point. The sea around it, which had been an extraordinary, brilliant blue until a few minutes ago, had suddenly darkened, as if someone had thrown a switch. Over to the west, he made out the twinkling lights of Puerto Madre, the island’s second-biggest town. The main airport was farther north, outside the capital of Santiago. But that wasn’t where he was heading. He pressed down on the joystick and the plane veered to the right, circling over the forests and mangrove swamps that surrounded the old, abandoned airport at the bottom end of the island. The Cessna had been equipped with a thermal intensifier, similar to the sort used in American spy satellites. He flicked a switch and glanced at the display. A few birds appeared as tiny pinpricks of red. More dots pulsated in the swamp: crocodiles or perhaps manatees. And a single dot about twenty yards from the runway. He turned to speak to the man called Carlo, but there was no need. Carlo was already leaning over his shoulder, staring at the screen. Carlo nodded. Only one man was waiting for them, as agreed. Anyone hiding within half a mile of the airstrip would have shown up on the radar. It was safe to land.

Familiar things, their touch and sight and sound, had become an ache of heart—all encompassing—which filled the waking day and penetrated sleep. Strangely—and in a way it shamed her at the time—there were never nightmares; only the steady procession of events as they had been that memorable day at Madison airport. She had been there to see her family leave for Europe: her mother, gay and excited, wearing the bon voyage orchid which a friend had telegraphed; her father, relaxed and amiably complacent that for a month the real and imagined ailments of his patients would be someone else’s concern. He had been puffing a pipe which he knocked out on his shoe when the flight was called. Babs, her elder sister, had embraced Christine; and even Tony, two years younger and hating public affection, consented to be kissed. “So long, Ham!” Babs and Tony had called back, and Christine smiled at the use of the silly, affectionate name they gave her because she was the middle of their trio sandwich. And they had all promised to write, even though she would join them in Paris two weeks later when term ended. At the last her mother had held Chris tightly, and told her to take care. And a few minutes later the big prop-jet had taxied out and taken off with a roar, majestically, though it barely cleared the runway before it fell back, one wing low, becoming a whirling, somersaulting Catherine wheel, and for a moment a dust cloud, and then a torch, and finally a silent pile of fragments—machinery and what was left of human flesh. It was five years ago. A few weeks after, she left Wisconsin and had never returned.

The Coeur d’Alene Airport was a sleepy little airfield with three paved runways laid out in a standard triangle configuration. Two small FBOs (fixed base operators) on the field rented airplanes and offered instruction. I felt a little discouraged upon seeing the dilapidated condition of the buildings at both of these businesses. It appeared they were both operating on a shoestring budget—just as Martha and I were at the time. The airport had no air terminal or commercial airline service. I was nevertheless hoping I would at least see a little airplane taxiing, taking off, or landing that day, but there was no activity whatsoever. It was exciting, though, for me to just see a number of single-engine private aircraft tied down on the tarmac as I imagined myself climbing into one, taxiing out, and taking off.

The boys reached the flight line just as Randy was completing a preflight check of the aircraft. In a few minutes they were strapped in their seats and taxiing toward the active runway. The pilot remarked, “Because of the direction of the wind, that runway is the only one I can use to head the plane into the wind.” He tuned his radio to the proper frequency and contacted Bayport tower. An immediate reply crackled from the plane’s receiver. “Ace Service Flight Two-Six is cleared to runway One-Niner. Wind’s from the southeast at fifteen knots. Altimeter setting, Two-Niner-Eight-Six.” Randy paused to check his instruments, controls, and engine magnetos. The tower then cleared him for immediate take-off. Turning into the runway, he eased the throttle ahead. Soon he and his passengers were airborne and taking a course to the northwest. The boys gazed down at the earth below. The terrain became more hilly with each passing mile. The expanses of wooded areas looked like rumpled deep-green carpet. Here and there, lakes and small streams reflected the sun in bright

The track at that time was not laid out with much regard for the audience. Superimposed on the existing runways of Oakes Field, the former airport of Nassau, and making the most possible use of the already paved surfaces, it meandered off into backwaters previously known only to aviators, with little regard for the perspective of the cash customers.

Gambia Airport charges landing fees to airlines based on factors like aircraft weight and type, which help cover the maintenance and upkeep of runways.

...every man has a basement. Some lay dark. Unlit. Concealed. Others sprawl like airport runways for all the world to see. The difference is determined by whether he is hiding something or digging it up. Hammer or shovel says much about a man. [Murphy Shepherd']

The pilot tapped his GPS screen a few times until he found the nearest airport. "Closest airfields are north. The Virgin Islands.” “You crazy, man? They’re probably already tracking us on radar. DEA or the Coast Guard would probably be waiting for us...” Marco tapped on the touchscreen map. “What about this island over here? Says it’s got a private air strip. Small, but we could go there.” The pilot squinted down at the GPS chart. “I know that one. Some rich guy owns it, I think. He’ll probably have security guards.” Marco tapped the map again, changing the layering to show the satellite image. “The buildings are all on the northwest side of the island. It would take people time to get to the runway, even if they knew we were there. It’s been storming hard so they won’t be outside. We can land on goggles, keep the lights off. We’ll cut the engine as soon as we touch down. We only need ten, fifteen minutes at the most. I’ll check the oil and top us off, then we’ll take off before anyone has time to reach us.” The aircraft jolted as they flew through more turbulence. More lightning in the distance. “Fine,” said the pilot. Marco tapped on the GPS display screen. “There. Your waypoint is in.” The aircraft banked slowly left as the pilot turned them toward the private island.

Welcome aboard dear brother, on the last flight to Heaven, you know you can bail out if you’re afraid, this is your last chance to live," She winked at me, "A normal life, but If you decide to come with me, I promise not to crash this plane at the end of the runway!" "How can a guy say no to that offer sis, but let's not crash ok?" I had to add "And the rabbit keeps falling down the rabbit hole, ha-ha!" "Oh good! I'm so glad you're coming with me, there's just one last thing I forgot to mention." She said with a wicked smile. "What's that my love?" "This plane requires a pilot and co-pilot to fly legally!" She batted her pretty little eyelashes at me! "Oh, that's a relief, we're at an airport, I'm sure there are many qualified co-pilots to choose from my dear!!" "But I want you to be my co-pilot bro, and there is one last thing you need to know." "What?" I asked in pure terror. "When you fall down the rabbit hole there is no bottom to land on! Ha-ha-ha!

One day in his new job he was handed the budget for the Department of Agriculture. “I was like, Oh yeah, the USDA—they give money to farmers to grow stuff.” For the first time, he looked closely at what this arm of the United States government actually does. Its very name is seriously misleading—most of what it does has little to do with agriculture. It runs 193 million acres of national forest and grasslands, for instance. It is charged with inspecting almost all the animals Americans eat, including the nine billion birds a year. Buried inside it is a massive science program, a large fleet of aircraft for firefighting, and a bank with $ 220 billion in assets. It monitors catfish farms. It maintains a shooting range inside its DC headquarters. It keeps an apiary on its roof, to study bee-colony collapse. There’s a drinking game played by people who have worked at the Department of Agriculture: Does the USDA do it? Someone names an odd function of government (say, shooting fireworks at Canada geese that flock too near airport runways) and someone else has to guess if the USDA does it. (In this case, it does.)

As the plane pulled away from its gate that day, I looked out my window and back at the airport, knowing that my mother stood somewhere behind its black-glass windows, dressed in her winter coat and waving me on. I remember the jet engines firing, shockingly loud. And then we were rattling down the runway and beginning to tilt upward as the acceleration seized my chest and pressed me backward into my seat for that strange, in-between half moment that comes before finally you feel lifted.

For example, if you want to know the likelihood that the geese loitering near the LaGuardia Airport runway will cause your plane to crash-land in the Hudson River and the event will become the subject of a major motion picture, you go to see the undersecretary or deputy undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs, which oversees the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which handles the bewildering set of conflicts in America between people and animals.

The biggest bang, which knocked us four feet backwards, came when we mixed liquid oxygen with an equal amount of liquid hydrogen. The shock wave thudded against a huge hangar under construction about five hundred yards away and nearly knocked four workers off the scaffolding, while Davey and I huddled out of sight behind the cement wall, giggling like schoolboys. One of our colleagues named our walled-in compound Fort Robertson because the guy and the place seemed perfectly mated, and the name stuck. We got Dr. Scott of the Bureau of Standards cleared to work with us as an adviser. The Fort Robertson complex was located less than a thousand yards from the Municipal Airport’s in-bound runway. And the first time Dr. Scott paid us a visit and saw the three tanks of liquid hydrogen holding hundreds of gallons under storage, his knees began to shake. “My God in heaven,” he exclaimed, “you’re gonna blow up Burbank.

... I arrived at the Coeur d’Alene Airport at about 3:30 AM to fuel and preflight an airplane. My assignment was to land on an unimproved grass strip near Priest Lake at first morning light to pick up an armed special agent. I had to time my night departure out of Coeur d’Alene to land on the strip as early as possible, but the airstrip was unlighted, so I needed just enough natural light to see the runway. The landing area in the forest was a narrow grass strip, which had been cut out in a dense stand of Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir, just to the west of the central portion of Lower Priest Lake. The sun hadn’t risen when I arrived at the airstrip, but there was just enough light to pick out the narrow runway carved into the forest below and land. It all seemed very clandestine as I bumped to a stop in the dim morning light. A shadowy figure dressed in dark-green fatigues emerged from the trees and walked quickly toward the airplane. As he got closer, I saw a holstered pistol on his belt and a gold badge on his chest. He got into the plane with the engine idling and the propeller still turning, and we took off immediately. (Page 355)

Nearby, towers of bottled water were staged near the runway awaiting distribution. Sure, some bottled water is necessary after a natural disaster, but in general I think it’s one of the least sustainable methods of addressing a water crisis. Once that water was consumed, the bottles simply became mountains of litter covering the already trashed streets of the capital. Without enough bottled water to go around, many earthquake survivors resorted to drinking water from the street gutters. More than one million folks were being exposed to deadly waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid. Reusable water filters were what the Haitians needed most. That was exactly where I chose to direct Wine to Water’s response. We partnered with FilterPure, a nonprofit organization out of the Dominican Republic that builds water filters. The filters were ceramic, simple things made much like clay flowerpots. Before the firing process, the clay is mixed with sawdust and a small amount of fine-grain silver. The sawdust burns in the kiln, leaving tiny porous holes for the water to trickle through. The silver mixed throughout kills any bacteria making it through the tiny pores. These pot filters, sitting inside a simple five-gallon plastic bucket, are capable of filtering water for a family of eight to ten people for up to five years. Some folks from FilterPure picked me up at the airport in a truck loaded with filters. Together we started handing them out throughout the city, in refugee camps and at orphanages in the area.

Cal studied Savvy as the C-130 sped down the runway. The plane held a half-dozen marines and supplies bound for Manda Bay. She'd chosen the seat across from him near the tail of the aircraft and donned protective headphones. Between the headphones and other passengers, there was no way for them to discuss the mission during the flight. He’d been released from the brig at two thirty in the morning and was told he’d be departing on the transport as scheduled. Savvy hadn't stopped by his CLU to offer an explanation, and he’d decided not to go to hers. He needed to sleep. They'd have time to sort things out before departure. But daylight brought no communication from her, and he’d been surprised to find himself alone in the vehicle that delivered him to the airstrip the US military shared with the international airport. He’d begun to wonder if the op would be canceled, when she arrived seven minutes before their scheduled takeoff. She’d dropped into the seat across from him with little more than a nod in his direction, donned the headphones, and cracked open a file. She stared at the papers on her lap as if they held the meaning of the universe. They reached cruising altitude. The interior was loud, but not so loud the headphones were necessary. Still, she kept them on. He’d been watching her for twenty minutes, noting that she had yet to turn a page. He’d been looking forward to seeing her. He’d wanted to check the bruises on her neck, make sure she was okay. But the concern had evaporated in the wake of her avoidance. Her utter lack of acknowledgment of what had transpired last night. He reminded himself she’d been assaulted. It was wrong of him to expect her to be rational, cool, and calm today. She’d said the man had assaulted her before, and Evers had indicated the same with his words and actions. She had the right to be messed up. If this were a normal situation. But nothing about this was normal. They were heading into a covert op, and he knew next to nothing of their plan. Worse, he needed to know if she was on her game. He needed Savannah James, Paramilitary Operations Officer for the Special Operations Group within SAD. He needed the covert operator who could do everything he could do, backward and in high heels. He didn’t know if that woman had boarded this turboprop. Flights always took longer on C-130s, and he estimated they’d be in the air about three and a half hours. Too long to wait to find out what was going on in that complex brain of hers. He unbuckled his harness and moved to the empty seat next to her. Her fingers tightened on the files in her lap. He reached over and extracted the papers from her grip and set them aside. He slid a hand down her arm and took her hand, interlocking his fingers with hers. Her hand was tight, stiff, then all at once, she relaxed and squeezed his hand. After a moment, she pulled off the protective headphones and leaned her head on his shoulder. Something in his chest shifted. He was holding hands with Savvy as she leaned on him, and it felt…right. Good. Like something he’d needed forever but hadn't known. Several marines sat too close for them to attempt conversation, and a guy sitting across the empty fuselage watched with unabashed curiosity. Cal didn't care. He liked the way she leaned on him. The way she was willing to accept comfort. The way her hand felt in his. And he was thankful he hadn't been cut from this mission, no matter how much he hadn't wanted it at first. The idea of her having to pretend to be a sexual plaything to anyone but him made his blood pressure spike. It was messed up, but he couldn't deny it. The fact that he didn't like the idea of any other man touching her—even if it was only an act—was a problem to deal with when they returned to Camp Citron. Right now, he was a soldier embarking on a mission, and as he would on any mission, he’d protect his teammate at all costs.

Barra Airport, Scotland, is the only airport in the world where scheduled flights use a beach as a runway.

Walt Disney World once had its own airport with a singing runway (Lake Buena Vista STOLPort runway). Grooves in the tarmac were spaced so the lines played the opening notes of "When You Wish Upon a Star". The airport closed in 1972.

The day-to-day management of the executive branch was falling apart before our eyes. Trump was all over the place. He was like a twelve-year-old in an air traffic control tower, pushing the buttons of government indiscriminately, indifferent to the planes skidding across the runway and the flights frantically diverting away from the airport.