研究所、轉學考(插大)、學士後-英文題庫下載題庫

IV. Discourse Structure: Choose the best answer from the box below for each blank in the passage. 

 

26-30 

 

        One of the scariest videos on YouTube was recorded by the nose-cone camera of a fighter jet as it was taking off. 26 The pilot spends an agonizing 30 seconds or so trying to regain control, before issuing the order to eject, after which the viewer is treated to a shot of the onrushing ground before the screen goes blank. 

        Bird strikes are a problem—sometimes a fatal one—for military and civil aviation alike. America’s Federal Administration reports that there are about 10,000 such strikes a year to the country’s non-military aircraft, costing more than $957 million in damage and delays. 27 

        Moreover, though relatively few people have been killed in accidents caused by bird strikes, the potential for something horrible to happen is real—as was shown by one of the most famous strikes of recent years. 28 The passengers were saved only by the skill of the pilot, Chelsley Sullenberger, who managed to ditch the plane safely in the Hudson river. 

        At the moment, attempts to deal with the problem mostly involve efforts to cull flocks of the larger species—geese in particular—in the vicinity of airports, and also the use of bird scarers to try to drive off those actually sitting near runways. 29 There may, however, be a better way. For a decade or more the air forces of several countries have used radar to track birds which might threaten their aircraft. 30 If they work, the old methods of trying to scare birds away, or cull them, can be abandoned. 

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(A) Now, similar systems are being considered for civilian airports. 

(B) In 2009 an Airbus with 155 people on board hit a flock of geese when it was taking off from LaGuardia airport in New York. 

(C) As the figures suggest, these approaches do not work well. 

(D) Just after the plane leaves the runway a large bird comes hurtling towards it and vanishes into the aircraft’s engine. 

(E) The world-wide figure is estimated by the European Space Agency to be $1.2 billion.