Terror takes toll on nation's travel agents: companies have cut back on business travel and more people are replacing leisure travel with at-home family activities

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 3, 2001 | by Donna De Marco

Meanwhile, a small but growing number of people have regained confidence in the safety of air travel amid the heightened safety checks. And they are experiencing unusual comfort in nearly empty aircraft.

Kai-Jurgen Lietz and his wife, Amanda, from Frankfurt, Germany, visited the nation's capital for a three-week vacation and flew back home in late September. "I felt like we were flying first class," Lietz said of their domestic U.S. flights.

Likewise, Motoko Takagi of Sendai, Japan, recently arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport aboard a nearly empty All Nippon Airways flight. There were only six passengers. "I didn't get tired because the plane was empty," she said.

OSAMU TSUKIMORI WRITES FOR Insight's SISTER PUBLICATION, THE WASHINGTON TIMES.

RELATED ARTICLE: Patience is short at airports.

Airport managers nationwide are frustrated at the inability of most airlines to move passengers more swiftly through tough new security scans. "I won't be satisfied until we don't have the lines anymore, and we're working with airlines at all levels to express our dissatisfaction with the lines," says Beverly Swain Staley, manager of Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI), which a recent poll of 2,878 travelers ranked worst in the nation for tedious lines.

Travelers at BWI face lines taking three hours or more to navigate, as well as another factor common to airports among the worst 10: resistance to change. Until now, airlines had sole responsibility for screening, and they freely closed security lanes even as airports urged them to add more. "We can't make them do it," says John L. White, BWI's communications director. "We don't dictate practices to private businesses."

As one intended defense against repetition of the Sept. 11 hijackings, airport lines snake through terminals while identification is matched to travel documents as often as four times. Some checked baggage is searched by hand. Analysts say security still is less strict than at Israeli and European airports.

"The new passenger-focused regulations would have done nothing to stop the terrorists and will do little more than add to already-long delays at airports," says Robert W. Poole Jr. of the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Airline executives say few travelers understand airlines run screening, using contractors who blame recruiting problems on wages less than $10 per hour. At BWI, Globe Security and the Wackenhut Corp. have such contracts. According to a Wackenhut spokesman, his company will not seek renewal of a contract that won't let it offer a $12 hourly wage that qualified employees seek.

FRANK J, MURRAY WRITES FOR Insight's SISTER PUBUCATION, THE WASHINGTON TIMES.

DONNA DE MARCO WRITES FOR Insight's SISTER PUBLICATION, THE WASHINGTON TIMES.