There I was flying along at 13,000 feet with no feeling of alarm. My family and I sat there in first class on an Alaska Airlines DC-10 on our way to Disney Land. The cards kept us happy along with the constant Sprite refills we received. As a little kid, that is all I could possibly want, a good game of goldfish with my dad and constant bags of peanuts. My ride was going great. All of the sudden I felt the Sprite and peanuts rise to my chest. Before I could think about it, meal trays were spilt, our cards were scattered, and everyone was talking. "We have just experienced some heavy turbulence," the pilot announced. We lost 2500 feet in one second. It made me think of how quickly our airplane could have hit the ground.

             Air travelers are constantly coming up with concerns about traveling safety. Among these concerns is airworthiness. Is an airplane safe to fly? This is a concern because people want to feel confident they are safe when aboard an airplane. Most of us have been on an airplane, for a family vacation, business trip, or maybe to visit the relatives on the holidays. I am sure the thought of crashing has gone through everyone"s mind. What if there were a crash and my friends and I were on board? What went wrong? What caused the crash? These are the questions investigators are trying to answer regarding Alaska flight 261.

             My research began at the CWU library where I found my self on CATRAX, the CWU search system. You can search for books, magazines, topics, authors, and exc. Being a pilot myself, I am interested in aviation, and the recent Alaska Airline crash was all over the news. I thought this would make the perfect topic. The process of research was easy because of the Internet. I first tried our CWU library. Due to my topic being recent, I had a hard time finding sources, so I got on the Internet. I learned from the news, the aircraft that crashed was Seattle based, so I decided to search the Seattle Times newspaper for some articles.