plane people
n.pl.— «Currently, about 2,500 of these Vietnamese “plane people” are leaving each month under the program, refugee officials said. “This number is roughly equal to the total monthly arrivals in the region by boat people.”» —“Fewer ‘Boat People,’ Says U.N. Official Vietnam Refugees Effort ‘a Success’” by William Branigin in Bangkok, Thailand Washington Post Sept. 8, 1984. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
How and why do words from one language find their way into another? Vietnamese, for instance, includes lots of words borrowed or adapted from French. Such linguistic mixing often happens when languages brush up against each other and speakers reach...
How and why do words from one language find their way into another? Vietnamese, for instance, includes many words borrowed or adapted from French, a vestige of colonialism. For example, the Vietnamese word for “train station,” ga, comes...