Word: ilyushin
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...Algerian coast one day last week a Russian Ilyushin 18 turboprop airliner cruised along in the early afternoon sunshine. Alone in the blue skies at 28,000 ft., it had aboard the Soviets' figurehead of state, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet Leonid Brezhnev, 54, on his way to visit Guinea via a stopover in Morocco. At precisely 2:18 p.m. the Ilyushin got company...
Lazing alongside were three French air force "Mistral" jets. One waggled its wings as if to signal to the Ilyushin. The Russian pilot stolidly pursued his course, and for eight minutes the jets merely kept pace. Then, suddenly, one of them whooshed ahead, turned and opened fire in the Russian plane's path. "International banditry," howled Moscow's pro test to France. The Ilyushin had been 82 miles off the Algerian coast at the time of the incident, declared the Russians. It had cleared properly with Algiers control, cried Moscow: the attack had been entirely unprovoked...
...Regrettable incident," the Quai d'Orsai conceded. But why had the Ilyushin failed to respond to radio and visual urgings to get back on proper course? Reason for the intercept and the warning shots across the bow was that the Ilyushin had strayed inside what the French have marked off as their 80-mile "zone of responsibility" off Algeria. There the embattled French, trying to prevent infiltration of arms and men to the Algerian rebels, insist on the reserve right to control air and sea traffic. Furthermore, said the French, custom had been violated by the Russians' failure...
...obvious man to include was ex-Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma, who was put in office by the rebels last August and chased to exile in Cambodia by the army in December. But the King detests Prince Souvanna, who is his distant cousin. Fortnight ago, a Russian Ilyushin 14 slipped into the Cambodian capital of Pnompenh bearing a rebel delegation that tried to talk Souvanna into returning to Laos to head up a rump government in the rebel-held sector. Souvanna cautiously refused to budge...
...Each had literally broken apart while flying through turbulence. In every case the break occurred just behind the rear passenger door. First-class passengers, who are seated in the rear compartment, complain of a violent sideways jarring motion in turbulent weather. After flying back from the Congo in an Ilyushin, a top Ghanaian official declared: "I will never fly in one of them again. It's like dancing the High Life at 18,000 feet...