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At half-past six on a Friday evening in January, Lincoln International Airport, Illinois, was functioning, though with difficulty. The airport was reeling-as was the entire Midwestern United States-from the meanest, roughest winter storm in half a dozen years. The storm had lasted three days. Now, like pustules on a battered, weakened body, trouble spots were erupting steadily. A United Air Lines food truck, loaded with two hundred dinners, was lost and presumably snowbound somewhere on the airport perimeter. A search for the truck-in driving snow and darkness-had so far failed to locate either the missing vehicle or its driver. United's Flight I I I-a non-stop DC-8 for Los Angeles, which the food truck was to service-was already several hours behind schedule. The food snafu would make it later stiff. Similar delays, for varying reasons, were affecting at least a hundred flights of twenty other airlines using Lincoln International. Out on the airfield, runway three zero was out of use, blocked by an A6reo-Mexican jet-a Boeing 707-its wheels deeply mired in waterlogged ground beneath snow, near the runway's edge. Two hours of intensive effort

had failed to get the big jet moved. Now, A6reoMexican, having exhausted its own local resources, had appealed to 'IVA for help. Air Traffic Control, hampered by the loss of runway three zero, had instituted flow control procedures, limiting the volume of incoming traffic from adjoining air route centers at Minrieapolis, Cleveland, Kansas City, Indianapolis, and Denver. Despite this, twenty incoming flights were stacked up overhead, and orbiting, some nearing low fuel limits. On the ground, twice that number were readying for takeoff. But until the backlog of flights in the air could be reduced, ATC had ordered further delays of outbound traffic. Meanwhile, terminal gates, taxiways, and ground holding areas were increasingly crammed with waiting aircraft, many with engines running. Air freiQht warehouses-of all airlines-were stacked to their palletized limits with shipments, their usual high speed transit impeded by the storm. Freight supervisors were nervously watching perishables-hothouse flowers from Wyoming for New England; a ton of Pennsylvania cheese for Anchorage, Alaska; frozen peas for Iceland; live lobsters-trans-shipped from the east for a polar route flight-destination Europe.