Airline says UFO nearly hit jet
     ZURICH, Switzerland (September 26, 1997 12:51 p.m. EDT
 http://www.nando.net) -- An unidentified, wingless object traveling
 at high speed passed dangerously close to a Swissair jetliner
 between Philadelphia and Boston, the airline said Friday.
     The pilot and co-pilot gave U.S. investigators different des-
 criptions of the object that passed about 50 yards from the Boeing
 747 after it had taken off from Philadelphia on Aug. 9, said the
 airline.
     The pilot told the National Transportation Safety Board that the
 object was long and wingless, but the co-pilot said it was more
 spherical in nature, Swissair spokesman Erwin Schaerer said.
     The incident took place at 23,000 feet. The plane's final
 destination was Zurich.
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                  Close calls over skies of Dallas
     DALLAS - September 26, 1997 09:51 a.m. EDT -- A Southwest Air-
 lines jetliner had to take evasive action when a business jet turned
 into its path 2,500 feet over downtown Dallas, setting off a col-
 lision warning on the commercial airliner. It was not known how
 many people were aboard the planes.
     "It was close," said Doug Murphy, air traffic division manager
 for the Federal Aviation Administration's Southwest region.
     The planes, a Boeing 737 and a Lear 35, came within less than a
 mile of each other early Thursday. The planes should have been at
 least three miles apart or separated by at least 1,000 feet of alti-
 tude to meet the FAA's minimum safety standards.
     The scare came just before 8 a.m. as Flight 858 from San Antonio
 was on final approach to Dallas Love Field.  The Lear 35 turned
 slightly less than a mile in front of the Southwest 737, which then
 went into a sudden climb after a collision warning sounded.
     A preliminary FAA report indicated the air traffic controller
 who was in charge of both airplanes "may have forgotten the South-
 west jet was there," Murphy said.
     It was not immediately known how many people were aboard the
 planes.
     Scott Keller, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers
 Association Local at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport
 radar room, which is in charge of the airspace over most of Dallas
 and Fort Worth said "some questionable procedures that management
 forces us to use" contributed to the error.
     Keller also said that a $3 million Litton communications system
 that has clipped off the first part of controllers' conversations
 for more than a year had helped distract the controller.
     "This situation was inevitable. It was an incident waiting to
 happen," Keller said Friday in "The Dallas Morning News."
     Murphy said the FAA has "a working group of controllers and
 management involved in ongoing meetings to address some of the con-
 cerns about some of the procedures," Murphy said.
     He said he did not know whether problems with the communications
 system contributed to Thursday's close call.
     The controller was in charge of three airplanes at the time,
 "which is extremely light traffic," Murphy said.
     Keller said that in the minutes before the incident, the con-
 troller in charge of the two jets had been working sections of air-
 space that normally are monitored by at least three controllers. He
 was in the process of handing off some of that responsibility when
 the error occurred, Keller said.
 --------------------------------
 A Bit more on the Indonesian crash
       Jakarta,  Indonesia,  Sept. 26 - A passenger jet descending
 into thick smoke and haze with 234 people aboard slammed into a
 mountainous area and broke into pieces in Indonesia today.
      All 222 passengers and 12 crew were feared dead, officials
 said. Eleven foreigners, including two Americans and six Japanese,
 were said to have been aboard.
      Rescue crews rushed to the scene-about 20 miles south of Medan,
 a major commodities and trading center-but found only charred bod-
 ies. By evening, 212 bodies had been pulled from the wreckage, one
 airline official said.
                        Report: Clipped Trees
     Witnesses said the plane, Flight GA152, was flying low in the
 haze when it hit a tree, crashed and broke into pieces, according
 to The Associated Press. The plane exploded seconds before crashing,
 Anteve television said, quoting witnesses.
     After the crash, smouldering rubble from the wreckage was strewn
 on the ground amid thick tropical vegetation. Rescue workers stumbled
 through mud and water carrying bodies on stretchers.
     It was not immediately clear if the haze, caused by smoke from
 hundreds of forest fires throughout Indonesia, cut visibility or
 otherwise contributed to the crash.
     "The weather conditions were OK for landing, but there was smoke
 haze around Medan at the time," Communications Minister Haryanto
 Danutirto said. The airport was closed after the accident because of
 poor visibility.
      An airline official said visibility at the time of the accident
 was about one-third of a mile.
      Garuda canceled several flights to Medan after the crash, citing
 poor visibility. However, airport officials said other airlines
 continued to use the airport into the night.
                           15-Year-Old Plane
     The plane, a 15-year-old Airbus A-300 from government-run Garuda
 Airlines, had taken off from the capital, Jakarta, about 870 miles
 southeast, and crashed about 30 minutes before its scheduled 1:55
 p.m. landing in Medan.
     By the end of August, the plane had flown about 16,500 flights,
 said the manufacturer, Airbus Industrie, which was sending investi-
 gators to the site.
     The dense smoke has covered several Southeast Asian nations.
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