Travellers wary of flying on September 11

Who wants to fly on September 11? Or the week preceding the first anniversary of last September 11, the day of the deadly terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, or the week following? No one, it seems.

Air travellers have become so nervous about a repetition, they are avoiding the skies like no other time in recent aviation history.

The bookings for travel on September 11 are practically down to zero and most airlines – big and small – have drastically trimmed their flight schedules not only for that particular day, but also for the week before and after. Some airlines are not flying on some routes at all on September 11. They have no reason to fly, for, there are no passengers going anywhere.

In Canada, the country's largest airline, Air Canada, has trimmed its flight schedule, cancelling many flights to U.S. cities, restricting operations to mostly domestic points. So have American Airlines and United Airlines – the two U.S. carriers whose planes were seized by the hijackers for the terrorist attacks on September 11– as well as hundreds of other big and small U.S. carriers.

Among the flights cancelled are those that would have followed the same flight paths, about the same time, as the American and United jets involved in the terrorist attacks that day. In fact, the two airlines have retired the codes for those flights. They don't exist on their flight schedules anymore.

"As irrational as it may sound, I have no interest in flying anywhere around September 11," says Jason Young, a consultant with Monitor Group in Toronto, whose job involves flying frequently to visit clients. He is staying clear of airlines and airports during the second week this September.

For Jason, the memory of the events of last September 11 is still very vivid. He was getting ready to fly to Kansas City on a business assignment, and actually had his bags packed and ready to go when he was informed about the cancellation of his flight.

It was one of some thousand-odd flights that were grounded that day after terrorists had hijacked four passenger aircraft and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington and a field in Pennsylvania.

This is the last thing the airlines want. The industry is yet to recover from the impact of September 11 and the decline in air travel in its wake. Most major North American carriers are running heavily in the red, losing $5 billion in the first half of this year on top of the $7 billion they lost last year. With the result, several big-name carriers may be teetering on the brink of collapse.

Over the weekend, U.S. Airways became the first major airline to file for bankruptcy since September 11. United Airlines may not be far behind, if reports that the carrier is losing at the rate of just under a million dollars a day, are anything to go by.

For their part, airlines are trying everything possible to entice people like Jason to change their mind. They have tried telling them that September 11 or any day in September, would be the safest to travel in North America.

Security is being tightened up so much within countries and within cities, at airports and on board airlines, terrorism experts say there is simply no way a repeat of last September 11 could take place.

That is one part of it. Other is the many incentives being lavished on travellers. Ticket prices have been pared, stopover packages have been added, business travel discounts have been boosted to unprecedented levels. Yet people are not buying.

For instance, two weeks ago the number one U.S. carrier, American Airlines, cut fares for some of its business tickets by as much as 10 per cent. American also started offering discounts on last minute unrestricted tickets, which usually cost businesses thousands of dollars, directly to customers of some of the biggest U.S. travel agencies.

The move, conceived as part of the effort to boost sagging revenues, only triggered a price war with rival Northwest Airlines, which promptly cut business fares by up to 10 per cent on routes that overlapped with American. Northwest also started discounting on tickets entered on its computer reservation system.

When Americans learned of Northwest's move, it retaliated by entering the discounts on its reservation system, making them more broadly available. Northwest retaliated again, this time increasing its discounts to 20 per cent.

Other airlines are resorting to even more desperate measures. Florida-based holiday carrier, Spirit Airlines, has just announced it will not charge air fare for any seat on any of its flights on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

Some 13,000 seats are being made available for that day and the airline expects to fly a full schedule of more than 90 flights to 15 destinations.

According to Spirit officials, bookings would be taken through September 8 or until all seats have been filled. Customers can book online at www.spiritair.com with a credit card or through a travel agent.

"This is our way of saying 'thank you' to the American public and our valued customers for flying with us throughout this past year," Spirit Airlines' Chief Executive Jacob Schorr, says.

"We want to thank them because, had it not been for the support of our passengers and their willingness to get back in the air after the tragedy last year, Spirit Airlines may not have survived."

The free seats, he said, are intended as a way to support the recovery of business and personal travel. "I want to personally encourage the public to travel on September 11 and exercise our freedom as Americans," Schorr added.

But fear is the key, and just now terror fear, coupled with visa restrictions forced by security clampdowns in the United States and Canada – and perceptions that Muslims are unwelcome there – are keeping travellers grounded.

That could mean only one thing, in the opinion of most aviation analysts. The airline industry, not only in the United States, but around the world, is about to take a major hit.

The travel market is shrinking, as not only Americans, but Canadians, Europeans and even Japanese cut back on their foreign trips to stay home. Add to this the people in the Middle East and Asia, who constituted the fastest growing holiday travel segment in North America in the past decade, are not travelling either. Their travel in North America is down to a trickle this summer.

"These are tough times for all airlines," says one worried airline executive in Toronto. "There are no easy solutions.

Most carriers are losing money and getting dangerously low on cash. How all this will shakeout in another six months or a year, I wish I knew."