Cautiously Returning To Skies

By Errol A. Cockfield Jr | STAFF WRITER

September 19, 2001

The 737 waited for him on LaGuardia Airport's tarmac, at the end of a long, sterile concourse. Flight attendant Franklin Bahamonde, wings pinned over his heart, rolled his neat luggage and eyed the gates tentatively, cautious now, like the whole city.

"I took a couple of days off from flying," he said yesterday. "But today was do or die, get on the airplane or make career changes."

He shot a concerned look at the checkpoint he would soon go through, where uniformed men and women ask people to empty their pockets and put their carry-ons onto the movable belt. It is this system, experts now say, that was the weak link Sept. 11, when undetected knives and box cutters helped hijackers take over planes that crashed in Manhattan, at the Pentagon and in southern Pennsylvania.

For flight crew members like Bahamonde, who works for American Airlines, returning to the skies brought with it a mix of emotions that ran the gamut between bravery and fear. And then came the disheartening news Monday from the Air Transport Association that airlines might cut their ranks by as many as 100,000 workers.

Meanwhile, representatives of flight crews met with legislators on Capitol Hill yesterday to call for stricter controls in airports and on airplanes. For the Washington-based Association of Flight Attendants, which represents more than 50,000, a key area of concern was how passengers would be screened as they head to their gates.

That security job generally has high turnover, and employees are usually poorly paid and inexperienced, the group said, calling on the Department of Justice to treat the position with the same seriousness as it does federal law enforcement jobs.

Jim Moore, 44, a pilot just off an American Airlines plane at LaGuardia, agreed.

"We've learned a valuable lesson," he said, "and we need to be vigilant, not let our guard down."

At least at LaGuardia, it appeared federal and local authorities had an increased security presence. There were Port Authority police with big guns hung over their shoulders.

In Washington, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation scheduled a hearing tomorrow to examine federal aviation security standards. That came after several airlines lost as much as 40 percent of their stock value in Monday's stock trading.

For Bahamonde, 37, there was some measure of comfort after his morning flight from Miami to New York. The people at the screening area had found a tweezer in his luggage.

"It was a minuscule item," he said, but it fortified the spirit of a man showing up to work in the sky.