On the ground, twice that number were readying for takeoff. Despite this, twenty incoming flights were stacked up overhead, and orbiting, some nearing low fuel limits. Air Traffic Control, hampered by the loss of runway run way three zero, had instituted flow control procedures, limiting the volume of incoming traffic from adjoining air route centers at Minneapolis, Cleveland, Kansas City, Indianapolis, and Denver. Now, A éreo-Mexican, having exhausted its own local resources, had appealed to TWA for help. Two hours of intensive effort ef fort had failed to get the big jet moved. Out on the airfield, runway three zero was out of use, blocked by an A éreoMexican jet-a Boeing 707-its wheels deeply mired in waterlogged ground beneath snow, near the runway's edge. Similar delays, for varying reasons, were affecting at least a hundred flights of twenty other airlines using Lincoln International. The food snafu would make it later still. United's Flight 111-a non-stop DC-8 for Los Angeles, which the food truck was to service-was already several hours behind schedule. A search for the truck-in driving snow and darkness-had so far failed to locate either the missing vehicle or its driver. A United Air Lines food truck, loaded with two hundred dinners, was lost and presumably snowbound somewhere on the airport perimeter.
Now, like pustules on a battered, weakened body, trouble spots were erupting steadily. The airport was reeling-as was the entire Midwestern United States-from the meanest, roughest winter storm in half a dozen years. (CST) (CST)Ġ1 AT HALF-PAST SIX on SIX on a Friday evening in January, Lincoln International Airport, Illinois, was functioning, though with difficulty.
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