Fill the gaps using these words from the text: embezzlement bribe nepotism decline abysmal zealot

barred demolish incompetent corrupt

1. If something is in ____________ , it is suffering from a reduction in quality. 2. If a person is ____________, they do illegal or dishonest things to gain money or power. 3. ____________ is the practice of using your power and influence to give jobs to members of your family. 4. Prohibited and banned are other words for ____________ . 5. A ____________ is someone who believes they can do whatever they want to help their religious ideas to succeed. 6. ____________ is the practice of stealing money from your employer. 7. If something is ____________ , it is extremely bad or low in quality. 8. If you ____________ something, you destroy it completely. 9. An ____________ person is one who lacks the ability to do something correctly. 10. If you ____________ someone, you give them money so they will help you by doing something dishonest or illegal.

Choose the best answer for each question. Then look in the text and check your answers. 1. What is the capital of Afghanistan? a. Islamabad b. Kabul c. Kandahar 2. Which country occupied Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989? a. The USA b. Iran c. The Soviet Union 3. Who took control of Afghanistan in 1990? a. The USA b. The Taliban c. Iran 4. When did the USA invade Afghanistan? a. 2001 b. 2000 c. 1999
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5. Ariana is the national airline of: a. Pakistan b. Slovenia c. Afghanistan Its four o'clock in the afternoon and a hundreds of employees are leaving the headquarters of Ariana, Afghanistan's national airline. In the boardroom, one stays behind. Dr Muhammad Atash, a man with a kind but worried face, sits in his chair and rubs his eyes. Ariana faces a number of "difficulties," he explains modestly. "Embezzlement. Nepotism. Red tape. Lack of qualified staff, and a general attitude not to work." But then he pauses. "I believe we are starting to make progress." Ariana has few equals in the airline business for many reasons, all of them bad. Its history is abysmal. During Afghanistan's quarter of a century of war, Ariana planes were shut down, shot down or hijacked. It is still nobody's airline of choice today. A disastrous safety record means its flights are barred from most European and American airports. It is nicknamed "Scaryana". UN officials and foreign diplomats are forbidden to board. And most of the 1,700 staff are, Atash cheerfully admits, spectacularly incompetent or corrupt. Is Ariana the world's worst airline? Not necessarily. There are many poor airlines across the developing world. "I would not single out Ariana," says David Learmount at Flight International magazine. "If a country has no safety culture, neither does its airline." But Ariana has one advantage over other disaster airlines - a plan to turn it around. Atash, a straight-talking AfghanAmerican emigre, returned three years ago from the USA where he ran a business. He was given the job of manager at Ariana in June. It is not a glamorous job. Atash is paid just $100 a month and uses his own mobile phone. But he has a can-do attitude and plan to get rid of hundreds of deadwood staff without actually firing them. It is a difficult task but he is not alone. Atash pushes a buzzer. In comes Hanns Marienfeld, the leader of a six-strong team from Lufthansa hired to help with the rescue plan. He describes the state of Ariana one year ago: "It was not up to international standards," he says. "The flight schedule was non-existent. Customers had to pay a bribe to get a ticket, a second bribe to get a boarding pass and sometimes a third to get their seat in business class. We flew here or there, whenever the pilots felt like it." Initial safety standards were not good. In 2003 and 2004, Ariana's fleet of six planes suffered six major engine failures. "In Germany our pilots only see that sort of thing in a flight simulator. In Ariana we do it in real life," says Marienfeld. The early years were very different. Founded in 1955, Ariana quickly gained a reputation as a small but proud regional carrier. It flew hippies and
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adventurers from London, Paris and Frankfurt and brought honeymooning couples from neighbouring Pakistan. But in 1973, King Zahir Shah was overthrown and five years later the guns of war exploded. The visitors vanished and Ariana, like the rest of Afghanistan, fell into a steep decline. During the 10-year Soviet occupation, when the roads were too dangerous, Ariana became the safest way to travel. But the sense of security was strictly relative. Thanks to US support, the mujahideen were armed with Stinger antiaircraft missiles. So Ariana pilots had to learn dangerous manoeuvres to avoid the missiles while taking off and landing. Some staff could take no more. On a flight to Kandahar in 1989, a fight broke out in the cockpit. The pilot wanted to defect to neighbouring Iran. His co-pilot resisted. As they fought for the controls, the plane fell out of the sky, crashing into the desert near the Iranian border. All six people on board died. After the Soviet departure the airline went from bad to worse. When the Taliban took control of Kabul a year later, they changed Ariana's 20th-century business to fit their 7th-century ideals. Stewardesses were sent home, inflight music was banned and control was handed to a 26-year-old zealot. The helpless pilots asked the Islamic courts for permission to trim their beards otherwise they could not fit the emergency oxygen masks on to their faces. The UN imposed an international flight ban on the airline as part of a sanctions package against the Taliban. The company's reputation for disaster got bigger as its fleet of ageing aircraft got smaller. The former prime minister died in a 1997 crash; two accidents in early 1998 killed about 100 people. In 2000 a flight from Kabul to Mazar-i-Sharif was hijacked to Stansted airport in the UK. The US-led offensive the next year should have saved Ariana. Instead it almost destroyed the company. US planes bombed the Ariana fleet, demolishing six of its eight planes. The Taliban took $500,000 in company cash and ran. Now a process of change is taking root. The number of flights has increased from 10 to 15 a week. Management claims 85% of flights are on time and the first accounts in 16 years show that Ariana made a modest $1m profit last year. At Kabul airport the mechanics are being given new tools and new pilots are being trained, many of them former fighters. The old Kabul office is due to close and a modern sales centre, complete with young, eager staff and computerised booking, will open soon. Meanwhile Atash plans to put half his 1,700 workforce into a "reserve pool", asking them to stay at home but continue their pay. "We are building the system with completely new people. We cannot afford to mix them with the
Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2006 Taken from the Magazine section in www.onestopenglish.com

corrupt old ones," says Atash. Success is far from guaranteed and a battle is now under way for control of the company. "We're going to fight all the way," Atash promises. "Because the other option is to sit here and do nothing. And that's not an option - either for Ariana or for Afghanistan."

Match the beginnings and the endings of the sentences: 1. Ariana has a very bad image because 2. Ariana is different from many other disaster airlines because 3. Ariana is going to employ completely new people because 4. Things got worse for Ariana after the US invasion because 5. Ariana is nicknamed Scaryana because 6. There are reasons for optimism because a. many of the current employees are corrupt and lazy. b. the number of flights has increased and the airline made a modest profit last year. c. many people are too scared to fly in its planes. d. it has a very poor safety record. e. the Americans destroyed 75% of its planes. f. it has a plan to turn its fortunes round.

Match the verbs with the nouns they collocate with: 1. to impose 2. to make 3. to run 4. to pay 5. to gain 6. to take 7. to make 8. to suffer a. control b. a bribe c. a ban d. engine failure e. a profit f. progress g. a reputation h. a business

Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2006 Taken from the Magazine section in www.onestopenglish.com

Look in the text and find the words that mean: 1. excessive bureaucracy 2. to take control illegally of a plane by means of force 3. to choose one thing from a group for special attention 4. to leave a country, political party or organisation and go to another one 5. to cut hair so that it looks tidy 6. a piece of equipment used to train people to operate an aircraft 7. a group of planes owned by one organisation 8. a weapon designed to attack aircraft

Use these words to make phrasal verbs from the text: out 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. around shut _______ shoot _______ single _______ turn _______ take _______ break _______ down off out down

Would you travel with this airline? Why? Why not?

Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2006 Taken from the Magazine section in www.onestopenglish.com

KEY 1 Key words

1. decline 2. corrupt 3. nepotism 4. barred 5. zealot 6. embezzlement 7. abysmal 8. demolish 9. incompetent 10. bribe 2 What do you know?

1. b; 2. c; 3. b; 4. a; 5. c 3 Comprehension check

1. d; 2. f; 3. a; 4. e; 5. c; 6. b 4 Vocabulary 1 Collocations

1. c; 2. f (e); 3. h; 4. b; 5. g; 6. a; 7. e (f); 8. d 5 Vocabulary 2 Find the word

1. red tape 2. to hijack 3. to single out 4. to defect 5. to trim 6. a flight simulator 7. a fleet 8. an anti-aircraft missile 6 Vocabulary 3 Phrasal verbs

1. down 2. down 3. out

Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2006 Taken from the Magazine section in www.onestopenglish.com

4. around 5. off 6. out

Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2006 Taken from the Magazine section in www.onestopenglish.com