Seeing Disaster Fails to Deter 2 From Continuing With Flights

Reading about the crash of an airliner is one thing.

Seeing it is another.

And seeing it in person just before you are due to board another flight bound for the same destination as the airplane that crashed is--well--enough to give anyone pause.

“I had second thoughts,” admitted Geoff Bliss, who was en route to Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport Friday afternoon when Delta Flight 191 crashed and burned. “I had a lot of second thoughts about continuing my flight. But I rationalized . . . . “

And it wasn’t easy.

Bliss, 32, a Hermosa Beach marketing consultant, said that high winds and a heavy downpour of rain hampered his vision as he drove to the airport, but there was enough visibility to see something burst into flames in the sky above him.

“It was a bright orange fireball,” he said, “and it fell until it disappeared behind the tree line. I had a sick feeling that I knew what it was.”

He was right. At the airport, official news was scarce, but passengers who had transistor radios--or could get near a television set--quickly discovered that the fireball had marked the last moments of Flight 191.

Nonetheless, Bliss boarded American Airlines Flight 79 for Los Angeles--and so did Dr. Thomas Planchard, 35, an ophthalmologist who was arriving on another Delta flight from Shreveport, La. His flight was the last to land at Dallas before the field was temporarily closed.

“After we were down,” he said, “our airplane, a 727, turned at an angle of about 90 degrees to the runway for a moment, and we could see in the distance this big, black mushroom of oily smoke.”

A few minutes later, Planchard discovered that the smoke was from the airplane to which he was to have transferred to continue his flight to Los Angeles. But he, too, decided to continue.

“There was a moment of fear,” he said. “But you can’t give in to that, or you’d just stay home wrapped in cotton.”

And Fred Studwell, a retired machine tool worker from Newhall, felt the same way.

“I’m a little shaky,” he admitted as he arrived in Los Angeles. “I had a ticket on that plane from Dallas to Los Angeles, and I didn’t see it go down . . . first found out about it when I was sitting in a bar watching television.”

He boarded the alternative flight willingly enough, though, and said he was satisfied.

“Gave me three free drinks on the way,” he said.