Betty Bayé: Fear And Loathing At The Airport - And At 35,000 feet.
Fear and loathing at the airport - and at 35,000 feet
By Betty Winston Bayé
If you've only been flying for a few years, you missed how pleasant the experience used to be.
Ah, the days when people actually dressed up to fly, when passengers were treated with courtesy, and when, whether you were flying coach or first-class, your ticket entitled you to a meal or a snack served with real utensils and plates. If you're relatively new to flying, you know not of ample leg room, even in coach, and of airplanes offering newspapers and magazines to the passengers. Certainly, you've missed out on the days when pilots were known to invite children and first-time flyers into the cockpits, when you didn't have to have a ticket to meet friends and family at the gate, and when for many families the airport was a fun day trip to see the airplanes take off and land.
As the songwriter asked, “Can it be that it was all so simple then? Or has time rewritten every line?” Well, yes, time and circumstances have rewritten the rules such that there's not much joy in flying nowadays, and for that we have to thank the still-at-large Osama bin Laden and assorted other loners, losers and religious fanatics who rationalize and take delight in mass murder and mayhem.
After 9/11, an array of indignities was foisted upon airline travelers, including the risk of foot fungus from having to remove one's shoes before being allowed to pass through security. For that, we have to thank Richard Colvin Reid, aka “the shoe bomber.” The British-born bin Laden follower boarded an American Airlines flight on Dec. 22, 2001, winging its way from Paris to Miami, fully intending to blow himself, the plane and his fellow passengers to smithereens. He was thwarted, however, by a one-day trip delay, vigilant flight attendants, courageous passengers and apparently his own sweaty feet, which prevented Reid from being able to detonate plastic explosives that had been planted in the hollowed out bottoms of his shoes.
It seems like every time we become adjusted to being hassled and nickeled and dimed half to death for the privilege of flying — for example, having to pay security fees for every takeoff and landing, even if one's itinerary doesn't necessitate changing planes — something else happens, as it did on Christmas Day. That's when a baby-faced, 23-year old Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded an Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight with the intention of blowing up the Northwest plane with explosives that had been sewn into his underwear.
So now because of the so-called “underwear bomber,” more travelers can expect to be subjected to full body scans, X-ray images with which screeners are able to spot objects worn beneath a traveler's clothes. Assurances that passengers' privacy will be protected notwithstanding, and despite the hopes that scanners will act professionally and not fall over laughing at images of breast implants, pot bellies and thunder thighs, the case is being made that widespread use of full body scans really is going too far. The alternative to the scanners are full body pat downs, which thanks to “underwear man” ostensibly could involve a stranger fumbling around your private parts.
But, hey, it is what it is. The good old days of air travel are gone forever, and if the choice now is between yet more inconvenience at the airport, or death from being blown out of a jet 35,000 feet up by some lunatic calling himself a martyr for God, most people will choose inconvenience.
So, yes, the “underwear bomber” has added to the misery of flying, but there are ways psychologically at least to fight back, according to a new PBS series, “This Emotional Life.” It offers “tools” people can use to help reappraise and manage the fear, anxiety and impatience that trips to the airport now often provoke.
The good advice includes to “stop and take a breath.” Another is to acknowledge what people in other countries were forced to face much earlier: that terrorism is now a part of our daily existence, and that one way of fighting back is learning “to use our anxiety” by becoming more fully aware of what our emotions are doing to us — and to distance ourselves from the ones that provoke fear within us, not of some clear and present danger, but of that which we've convinced ourselves is to come.
Betty Winston Bayé's column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum and online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion. Here-mail address is bbaye@courier-journal.com.
By Betty Winston Bayé
If you've only been flying for a few years, you missed how pleasant the experience used to be.
Ah, the days when people actually dressed up to fly, when passengers were treated with courtesy, and when, whether you were flying coach or first-class, your ticket entitled you to a meal or a snack served with real utensils and plates. If you're relatively new to flying, you know not of ample leg room, even in coach, and of airplanes offering newspapers and magazines to the passengers. Certainly, you've missed out on the days when pilots were known to invite children and first-time flyers into the cockpits, when you didn't have to have a ticket to meet friends and family at the gate, and when for many families the airport was a fun day trip to see the airplanes take off and land.
As the songwriter asked, “Can it be that it was all so simple then? Or has time rewritten every line?” Well, yes, time and circumstances have rewritten the rules such that there's not much joy in flying nowadays, and for that we have to thank the still-at-large Osama bin Laden and assorted other loners, losers and religious fanatics who rationalize and take delight in mass murder and mayhem.
After 9/11, an array of indignities was foisted upon airline travelers, including the risk of foot fungus from having to remove one's shoes before being allowed to pass through security. For that, we have to thank Richard Colvin Reid, aka “the shoe bomber.” The British-born bin Laden follower boarded an American Airlines flight on Dec. 22, 2001, winging its way from Paris to Miami, fully intending to blow himself, the plane and his fellow passengers to smithereens. He was thwarted, however, by a one-day trip delay, vigilant flight attendants, courageous passengers and apparently his own sweaty feet, which prevented Reid from being able to detonate plastic explosives that had been planted in the hollowed out bottoms of his shoes.
It seems like every time we become adjusted to being hassled and nickeled and dimed half to death for the privilege of flying — for example, having to pay security fees for every takeoff and landing, even if one's itinerary doesn't necessitate changing planes — something else happens, as it did on Christmas Day. That's when a baby-faced, 23-year old Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded an Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight with the intention of blowing up the Northwest plane with explosives that had been sewn into his underwear.
So now because of the so-called “underwear bomber,” more travelers can expect to be subjected to full body scans, X-ray images with which screeners are able to spot objects worn beneath a traveler's clothes. Assurances that passengers' privacy will be protected notwithstanding, and despite the hopes that scanners will act professionally and not fall over laughing at images of breast implants, pot bellies and thunder thighs, the case is being made that widespread use of full body scans really is going too far. The alternative to the scanners are full body pat downs, which thanks to “underwear man” ostensibly could involve a stranger fumbling around your private parts.
But, hey, it is what it is. The good old days of air travel are gone forever, and if the choice now is between yet more inconvenience at the airport, or death from being blown out of a jet 35,000 feet up by some lunatic calling himself a martyr for God, most people will choose inconvenience.
So, yes, the “underwear bomber” has added to the misery of flying, but there are ways psychologically at least to fight back, according to a new PBS series, “This Emotional Life.” It offers “tools” people can use to help reappraise and manage the fear, anxiety and impatience that trips to the airport now often provoke.
The good advice includes to “stop and take a breath.” Another is to acknowledge what people in other countries were forced to face much earlier: that terrorism is now a part of our daily existence, and that one way of fighting back is learning “to use our anxiety” by becoming more fully aware of what our emotions are doing to us — and to distance ourselves from the ones that provoke fear within us, not of some clear and present danger, but of that which we've convinced ourselves is to come.
Betty Winston Bayé's column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum and online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion. Here-mail address is bbaye@courier-journal.com.
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