Poll: More Women Worried About Flying

By WILL LESTER, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Women are now three times as likely as men to say they're afraid of flying in airplanes, according to an Associated Press poll that suggests the public's fear of flying is returning to close to what it was before the Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings.

Six in 10 women said they are bothered now by flying, including just over a quarter, 27 percent, who said they are afraid, according to the poll, conducted for the AP by ICR of Media, Pa. Only three in 10 men said they are bothered by flying; 10 percent said they are afraid.

"With all this going on, I have no desire to fly," said Janice Inselberg, a 47-year-old preschool teacher from Fort Washington, Pa. "When I was younger, I loved to fly."

Traditionally, women have been more willing than men to admit to pollsters their anxieties on many matters, including their fear of flying. The differences between the genders on flying fears have not always been as pronounced, however.

Overall, fears of flying are returning gradually to levels seen before the terrorist attacks, with 19 percent of Americans saying they're afraid and 29 percent saying they're slightly bothered by flying. Half said they weren't bothered at all. Those levels of concern are slightly higher than before the attacks, though concerns spiked upward soon after the planes were hijacked.

Some other groups also had more fears of flying.

Those with less than a high school education and those who made less than $25,000 a year were far more likely than others to say they were afraid of flying.

The number of passengers on commercial planes has been gradually climbing since the attacks, though passenger capacity remains a fourth to half below the levels before the Sept. 11 attacks. Disturbances by unruly passengers aboard passenger planes in the last week that brought military jets scrambling to escort the planes back to airports in Chicago and Shreveport, La., highlighted continued tensions about air travel.

"I would fly now, but it would bother me a little," said Orlando, Fla., accountant Suzy Comstock. "Everything is so uneasy. It depends on what happens in the next six months."

U.S. airlines have laid off almost 100,000 employees in the past month and received a $15 billion government bailout that is expected to prevent all but a few of them from going bankrupt by next summer.

Government officials are scrambling to provide new security in airports and aboard passenger planes. Nine in 10 questioned said they favor armed sky marshals aboard planes and don't mind waiting in long lines for additional security procedures, such as luggage searches. The poll of 1,008 adults was taken Oct. 5 through Wednesday and has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

"We need better security," 68-year-old retiree Charles Magee of Albany, N.Y., said of the long waits. "If I had to go on a trip early and they said be here three hours early, I wouldn't mind waiting at all."

A majority, about six in 10, support giving the military the authority to shoot down passenger planes if they appear to be hijacked for terrorist purposes, while two in 10 were opposed. Two-thirds of men supported that measure, compared with half of women.

Among those who favored the shootdown policy, some conceded that it is a very tough call.

"What if all other passengers were as courageous as the ones in Pennsylvania?" said David Lidston, a 29-year-old cabinet maker from Naples, Maine. "You have to give the passengers a chance, but if it comes down to the last minute, you've got to do it."

He was referring to an apparent rebellion by hijacked passengers of a United Airlines flight over Pennsylvania that may have brought the plane down before it could be used as a flying bomb in another act of terrorism.

Several in the poll who said they favor the placement of armed sky marshals aboard passenger planes wondered why some of these security steps hadn't been taken years ago.

"When you look at all the terrorism that has already happened all over the world, I'm surprised they hadn't already started using air marshals," said Lidston. "I don't know what happened. I think America was dreaming for a while."

AP-NY-10-12-01 0427EDT

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