Fear of family flying

With terrorist threats to the left and air disasters to the right, why would anyone pack up two kids to fly to New York for Thanksgiving?

By Andrew Leonard

Nov 13, 2001 | When I first heard the news that American Airlines Flight 587 had crashed in New York, I was already wrestling with a separate, but seemingly serious, air-travel worry. On Saturday, my children, wife and I are scheduled to fly to New York for Thanksgiving. But the new restrictions on carry-on luggage were stressing me out.

Through years of flying cross-country with two kids (a 7-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy), we have developed a support infrastructure as intricate and comprehensive as an army supply line: Food bag, diaper bag, toy bag, kids' backpacks, parents' laptop cases. With two items per passenger, it all works. But with one per person (plus a purse or briefcase), my years of meticulous preparation were for naught. How inconvenient!

Then came the news of yet another jumbo jet disaster. And worries that I had successfully suppressed since the Sept. 11 attacks surged up once again. Never mind the tragedy that my son is still not potty-trained; with aircraft catastrophes becoming a monthly occurrence in the New York metropolitan area, there appeared to be bigger things to worry about. Was I crazy to be flying to New York? What kind of parent would load his kids on a plane headed to ground zero?

Logically speaking, one could argue that the week of Thanksgiving, this year, right now, is the most dangerous time to travel. It is hard to imagine a more appetizing terrorist target than aircraft flying to or from New York on the busiest travel days of the year. With each new report detailing the incompetence of the company that runs most airport security, my sense of complacency over the possibility of future disasters seems loopier and loopier. Isn't discretion the better part of valor?

But logic cuts both ways. Flying is still safer, statistically, than driving. And there is no clear evidence demonstrating that this newest crash is anything more than a horribly mistimed malfunction. A "normal" plane crash before Sept. 11 wouldn't have kept me from flying, so why should I let this one keep me from getting airborne?

The answer is, I'm not. We're going ahead with our plans to fly, just as the airline industry and President Bush want us to. We will soldier on through our fears of terrorism, and even our carry-on luggage angst.

It's not because of some bogus macho bravado, a need to stand tall during America's moment of trial. And it's not for the more temptingly plausible reason of wanting to maintain a semblance of normalcy in my kids' lives. No, the real answer is both troubling and cathartic. The primary psychological impact of the terrorist attacks on me is not that I feel that the world has changed in some fundamental, awful way, but rather that the real world has been revealed.

We live in a dangerous, unpredictable and untamable world. Planes crash. People die. Wars, plagues, famine and murder are commonplace. I could stay in Berkeley, Calif., with my kids and get wiped out by an earthquake. That's life, and hiding under our beds is no way to deal with it.

Next Page: Growing up in a world where towers get knocked down by planes

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