Airline wreckage being moved nine years later
     SIOUX CITY, Iowa - April 22, 1998 12:55 p.m. EDT -- Nearly nine
 years after an airliner crippled by an engine explosion crashed in
 flames at the city's airport, the last of the wreckage is finally
 ready to be hauled away.
     A fence surrounding the last pieces -- the tail, part of one wing
 and parts of an engine from the United Airlines DC-10 -- was removed
 during the weekend, leaving the debris visible to anyone flying into
 or out of Sioux Gateway Airport until a contractor can haul it away.
     "I just want to get rid of it. It's been a long, long run," said
 Paul Dunn, a member of an Iowa Air National Guard unit stationed at
 the airport who volunteered to serve as a guardian for the wreckage.
     During a flight from Denver to Chicago on July 19, 1989, one of
 the DC-10's engines exploded and disabled all of the hydraulic sys-
 tems that operate steering and braking.
     Pilot Al Haynes kept the crippled jet in the air for 45 minutes
 and managed to steer it to Sioux City, but as he tried to land the
 aircraft crashed and exploded in flames.
     Although 112 people died in the crash, 184 survived.
     Most of the wreckage was disposed of four years ago. Recently a
 judge released the last pieces to Dunn and United Airlines' insurance
 company because all of the lawsuits filed by victims' family members
 had been settled.
     "Hopefully, we'll get it hauled out of here toward the end of
 this week or by the first part of next week," Dunn said Tuesday.
     "Everything has to be melted down, so it can't be saved for
 souvenirs or anything like that," he said.
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 Europeans among 53 air crash victims - By Jeremy McDermott in Bogota
 A NUMBER of Europeans were among 53 killed when a flight to Ecuador
 hit a mountain minutes after taking off from the Colombian capital,
 Bogota.
      Air France, which had hired the Boeing 727 from an Ecuadorean
 company, said yesterday that the victims also included six French
 people, six Italians, three Danes, three Spaniards, two Germans,
 two Austrians and one Swiss.
      Pieces of fuselage and the bodies of the passengers and crew
 were widely scattered over the Colombian mountainside. A Briton was
 named as Mark Anthony Taylor, a Londoner. Foreign Office officials
 were in touch with his family.
      Flight 422, being flown by an Ecuadorean crew, was heading for
 Quito, the capital of Ecuador. The plane failed to make a sharp turn
 south after takeoff and ploughed into the mountain about 150ft below
 the summit.
     "I saw the plane hit crash into the top of the mountain and flip
 over," Yesid Gonzalez, who was watching from his office window, told
 the Radionet network. "A few seconds later it blew up and our windows
 shook. The plane broke into three large pieces."
     Rescue workers and police negotiated a narrow track up the moun-
 tain 1,600 ft above Bogota to reach the crash site, where they had
 to compete for space with hundreds of onlookers. Two people were
 arrested for looting the bodies and wreckage.
     The operation was called off at dusk, when drizzle turned to a
 downpour, extinguishing burning wreckage. Rescuers said they had no
 hope of finding survivors.
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 Northwest Airlines mechanics staging slowdown, causing cancellations
      EAGAN, Minnesota - April 22, 1998 2:49 p.m. EST  -- Northwest
 Airlines mechanics upset with contract talks are engaged in a work
 slowdown, forcing the cancellation of dozens of flights around the
 country.
     "The operation is being disrupted by a relatively small portion
 of our employees," Northwest spokeswoman Marta Laughlin said Tuesday.
 "We regret any inconvenience it has caused to passengers and, frank-
 ly, to fellow employees who have to work twice as hard."
     An internal Northwest memo says the slowdown has resulted in
 numerous planes being out of service and 70 canceled flights Monday,
 two to three times what the airline would consider normal, KSTP-TV
 of St. Paul reported.
     Airport police said they issued citations earlier this month
 after 30 mechanics drove slowly and blocked lanes at the main
 terminal.
     "We understand their concerns, but we are not going to let them
 stop traffic," Jim Welna of airport police said.
     The slowdown is not sanctioned by the International Association
 of Machinists, which is in contract talks with Northwest.
     Northwest spokesman James Faulkner blamed the delays on a small
 band of pilots and mechanics working without union authorization.
 There has been limited progress since the fall of 1996 on contract
 talks for more than 40,000 unionized Northwest workers.
 -------------------------------------------------------------------
   Home of Tokyo airport official damaged in pre-dawn bomb blast
     TOKYO - April 22, 1998 6:06 a.m. EDT -- A bomb damaged the home
 of an official at Tokyo's international airport Wednesday. Police
 suspected leftists, who have long opposed the airport.
     No one was injured in the pre-dawn blast at the suburban Tokyo
 home of Tadanori Yamaguchi. It shattered the windshield of Yamaguchi's
 car and tore the roof off his garage, a police official said, speaking
 on condition of anonymity.
     Yamaguchi is in charge of procuring land to build a second runway
 at the congested airport, located in Narita, 40 miles northeast of
 Tokyo.
     Local farmers and left-wing groups have violently opposed the
 airport since construction was first announced 30 years ago. The
 farmers resent confiscation of their ancestral lands, while leftists
 say the airport could be used as a base for the U.S. military.
    The airport was forced to open with only one runway in 1978.
 Officials are still negotiating with farmers to get land for the
 second runway.
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