Flying

In the rushed "I-hate-to-wait" world of frequent business fliers, last-minute laggards will have to start changing their ways. "Your typical business traveler thinks they have it right when they arrive just 15 minutes before departure," said Thomas Nulty, president of Associated Travel International, a Santa Ana travel agency. Try that now, warns Nulty, and "they will probably get caught in some security [inspection] line and probably miss a flight."

There was a time, Rick Amber admits, when he thought he'd never fly again. Returning from a combat mission over Vietnam in 1971, he crashed onto the deck of an aircraft carrier and lost the use of his legs. "I was lucky to get out alive," he said this week. "I should have been killed." Today, he has a different mission--demonstrating to people like himself that the skies are open to everyone.

As 250,000 people watched, the Blue Angels flying squad twisted, rolled and played hide-and-seek Saturday through clouds that by 2:30 p.m. blocked out the blue sky over the 37th annual Navy Relief Air Show in El Toro. Five-year-old Terry Fernau from Anaheim was clearly baffled by the aircraft, asking his grandfather to explain just where "the noise comes from, and how can they fly upside down without falling out?" His grandfather weighed an explanation, then replied, "Magic, just magic."

Some pole vaulters say they enjoy the rush of flying high in the air, but Pat Alduenda is not one of them. "I'm scared to death of heights," said Alduenda, a Ramona High School senior. "I don't like flying on airplanes, and I wouldn't hang-glide if you paid me." But pole vaulting is different. "With pole vaulting, you're in control and you have your own fate in your hands," he said.

A 12-year-old boy is ready to pilot a plane to Alaska, thanks to an anonymous donor who replaced the funding lost when sponsors backed out after the fatal crash of 7-year-old Jessica Dubroff. After reading about Andy Hedin's plans in a newspaper, a woman from the San Diego area wrote him a $6,000 check, allowing him to reschedule his 1,300-mile trip for Aug. 5.

The first look inside the skull of Archaeopteryx, one of the earliest known bird-like creatures, suggests that its brain was sophisticated enough to master the vagaries of flight. Paleontologists have long argued whether the 147-million-year-old creature, about the size of a modern crow, could fly. The new evidence, reported this week in the journal Nature, indicates not only that Archaeopteryx could fly, but that it must also have had many ancestors who could.

Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett decided Wednesday night to press ahead with his attempt to fly around the world solo without refueling, despite a serious problem earlier in the day with the plane's fuel system. Fossett and his flight crew agreed to keep the Global- Flyer in the air rather than abandoning the record-setting attempt and setting down in Hawaii. He discovered the problem with the fuel system of the custom-built plane early Wednesday.

In the recent saga of Tabitha the cat, who disappeared in the cargo hold of a jumbo jet for 12 days after a transcontinental flight, pet owners could well understand the anguish of Tabitha's mistress. Lost luggage is a recognized hazard of air travel, but a missing pet can be a tragedy. Fortunately, Tabitha turned up safe. The incident could give dog and cat owners reason to doubt the ability of the nation's airlines to transport their pets safely.

Any good scientist knows insects should not be able to fly--their bodies are too fat for their tiny wings to lift. But an expert on aerodynamics and insect flight reported in Nature that he has solved the mystery and has come up with data that will fascinate aircraft designers. Charles Ellington of the University of Leeds in Britain said insects create a complex pattern of vortices when they flutter their wings. Studying the hawk moth, Ellington mapped out this pattern for the first time.

The long-dead bones of a four-winged dinosaur, the cat-sized Microraptor gui , have inspired lively argument among present-day paleontologists. How, they ask, did such an animal coast through the skies? For a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers took an unusual approach to test the 125-million-year-old dinosaur's flight capability -- they built a life-size model microraptor from a beautifully preserved fossil skeleton found in China.