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By Patrick Totty Posted on Adventure
In the middle of shock, there is no real perspective. We are all numbed to our core by the catastrophic events of Sept. 11.
But even a calamity has only so much power it can expend against the daily workings of human life. In the very slow healing and return to “normality” that will take place in America over the next months and years, we will find ourselves asking practical questions about the consequences of the evil acts committed against us.
Will it ever be safe to travel again?
Will we ever again take joy in the notion of taking a holiday from our familiar world?
The answer to these questions is yes, though what we will be saying yes to will be far different from what we once knew. We are like the man whose legs have been badly hurt in an accident. Yes, his doctors tell him, he will walk again. But he will walk perhaps with a limp, or possibly even some pain, and certainly with far more caution than he would have exercised before.
Still, he will take great enjoyment in the fact that he can walk and that his legs are there again to let him explore the world.
Practically speaking, how will we “get to yes?” What will the new world of travel look like?
First, of course, expect to see far more security measures for air travel. The days of spontaneous decisions to hop a flight will be gone. Travel will now involve sometimes elaborate preparations, as well as elaborate precautions.
Will such measures work? Most likely. It has been years since the Israeli airline El Al has has been a terrorist or hijacking target. Its proven security measures have made it virtually impossible for malicious passengers to board one of its airliners. Do these precautions cut into Israelis’ freedoms? Apparently no. Israeli tourists and travelers are common the world over, and at home they enjoy far more freedom than any of their neighbors.
Second, expect to see the U.S. airline industry radically restructured. The nonexistent airline security that allowed four jet planes to be hijacked simultaneously was the final gigantic insult that U.S. carriers have visited upon a long-suffering traveling public over the past few years. Even before the horrors of Sept. 11, the airlines’ callous disregard for their customers had brought millions of people to the boiling point.
So we will see a federal crackdown on the airline industry and the reimposition of government regulation. But it will extend beyond just security measures. Because there will be a temporary, but huge, drop-off in air travel after Sept. 11, we will see the demise of some carriers who are already flying at the thinnest edge of their operating margins. This means the government will be asked to bail them out. Since he who pays the piper calls the tune, we can expect to see the government impose some long overdue discipline on an industry that demonstrably cannot control itself.
In the end, Americans will travel on far safer but more expensive carriers. What they will lose – and it will be considerable – in convenience, they will gain in the restoration of some civility by airlines towards their customers and a transportation system that is less clogged and frantic.
Finally, it appears that the whole world has awakened to the dangers posed by terrorism. Even states that intensely dislike the United States understand that there simply is no place left that is unreachable by homicidal fanatics. If this is so, then there will be a concerted international effort to root out terrorist organizations everywhere on this planet. This new form of “world war,” if it succeeds, means that we will once again be able to enjoy the prospects of travel to far places, unhaunted by the specter of deranged men.
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