Our Delta L-1011 emerged from the cloud split-seconds before its wheels touched the waterlogged ground. "How much lower does the cloud cover have to be before they divert us to another city?" I asked Tom Norton. "About an inch," came the phlegmatic reply. (Ex-F4 pilot TJN categorizes any landing you can walk away from as "good.") But at least we had reached Atlanta, after a saga of air-traffic control problems, weather delays, and missed connections. (Does anyone remember taking a flight that <I>wasn't</I> full, <I>wasn't</I> late, and <I>wasn't</I> sweaty and stressful? Wasn't deregulation supposed to improve service by increasing the choices available to travelers?)
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