Direction: You have brief passages with 5 questions in each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
A flock of birds flew into an IndiGo Airbus about to take off at Patna this morning and damaged the plane’s engine before the captain slammed the emergency brakes. The close shave has again forced the glare on the airport already under the scanner for obstacles in its landing approach path. The Airbus A320, carrying 89 passengers and six crew members, had started taxiing when the birds, possibly attracted by the waste pile-up near the airport, crashed into the plane on the left around 8.05 am. The pilot hit the brakes, bringing the plane to a screeching halt seconds before take-off. Sources said the plane would have been running at a speed of about 40 nautical miles (74 kmph) at the time. Flight 6E 385 was scheduled to take off at 8.10 am for Delhi and onward to Hyderabad, Bangalore and Visakhapatnam. “The left-hand side engine of the aircraft got damaged after it was hit by the birds. There were no casualties fortunately and all passengers were taken out of the aircraft immediately after the pilot took it to the parking bay. The aircraft has been grounded and it will operate only after the safety engineers of IndiGo give a fit-to-fly certificate,” an IndiGo source at Patna airport said. All passengers were accommodated on other IndiGo flight:, the source added.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
flyinto :hit against something take off : ready to fly
slammed :push with a lot of force
close-shave : narrow escape
glare : a long, angry look
scanner : a devise for examining something
obstacles : hindrance
screeching : a loud, high, unpleasant sound
halt : stop scheduled : fixed (according to the time-table)
casualities : victims
bay : a marked section of ground, inside/outside a building (for parking/storing things)
grounded : to prevent an aircraft from taking off