Hi, I have the same problem. Win98SE.
I was worried that my system wasn't able to handle the new version, but since you guys have much better systems than me, I am glad that is not the case. :-)
Anyway, when I read what Golfer said about the engine noise, I tried removing the engine sounds "engstart.wav, eng.wav, and engoff.wav". That didn't fix it. Well, I tried, LOL. There are other sounds for the jet engines and such, I didn't try removing those. I was hoping that someone could find a way sort of like this to try to fix the problem temporarily. Not sure why the game is having trouble when the engine sound plays, weird.