Thoughts on air travel?

[ddmarsh]

My DH's birthday is the end of the month and I purchased tickets for he and our two oldest DS's to fly to Florida to stay with his parents. We had originally planned on all of us taking a trip somewhere but with the timing of Lily's birth (she'll be 4 weeks at the time) we just decided this would be better. Now I'm completely panicked at the thought of them traveling by air and would prefer them not to go - he doesn't think this is a problem at all. They would fly out of Pittsburgh which is now conducting random searches of vehicles that enter there and with the whole going-to-war issue and heightened securit alert - well you get the idea. The thing is if I push he would not go, but I don't want to disappoint him (the boys don't know they're going yet so that's not an issue with them) but I want to try and do what is best for everyone.

If anyone has any thoughts on this I would greatly appreciate it :).

Debbie
worried mom!

[egoldber]

Debbie, I am sorry you are so worried. My DH travels a lot for business. He is actually getting ready to leave Monday morning for Japan. He will be in Japan for a week followed by a week in California after he gets home. He'll then be home for three days and be gone again for a week. People ask me all the time if I am worried about him traveling and his safety and truthfully, my answer is no. I am a "little" concerned that he might get stuck overseas for awhile if we happen to attack Iraq prior to him returning from Japan and that is really the extent of my concern. That and the fact that we are supposed to get 20 inches of snow in the next few days and if it comes after he leaves I will be stuck shoveling the driveway!

My personal philosophy is that you can live in fear or you can live your life. I choose to live my life. The object of terrorism is to disrupt normal life so that ordinary people live in fear. I refuse to bow to that. And I also always try to remember that commercial news organizations are a business, not a public service. They sell a lot more airtime/newspapers by predicting doom and gloom than by reporting a balanced, rationale perspective.

The reality is that it is still statistically safer to fly anywhere than it is to drive your car to the grocery store.

My two cents,

[Momof3Labs]

In addition to Beth's thoughts, it is my opinion that September 11 will NOT happen again. Why not? Because anyone pulling anything remotely like what happened that day will be jumped and probably beaten to death with shoes, pillows, laptops, purses, what have you.

I gotta agree with Beth - you can wait for all of this to pass over (which will take months, maybe years) or you can continue on with your life - where there is a 99.999% chance that you will not be hurt by any of this.

But you have to do what is right for your family; no one can make that decision for you.

[Rachels]

I agree. I'm feeling really terrified of terrorism these days, actually, but am no more scared of flying than at any other time. I think that's not likely to be the M.O. of a future attack. At any rate, I think Beth phrased it really well. You have to decide whether living your life in fear is really how you want to live your life. I think it makes good sense to be as prudent as you can be. DH and I recently talked about a contingency plan if Boston is attacked and we can't reach each other. But I want to model joy for my child, and optimism, and to show her that there's a lot of beauty to the world. We're going to travel, and to celebrate family, and to get to each other however we can.

-Rachel
Mom to Abigail Rose
5/18/02