New Questions at the Airline Counter

Uneasy about flying? Be warned that starting last week, American citizens jetting to or from the United States are being asked before boarding to provide the names of next of kin. Passengers don’t have to comply with the new requirement, which may eventually be expanded to domestic flights, but it could provide needed information in case of an accident.

To make the question less alarming, airlines plan to use different phrasings, such as asking for an “emergency contact name” or “the name of someone not traveling with you.”

The new rule was spawned by the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, when it took hours to notify victims’ families. In 1990, Congress passed the Aviation Security Improvement Act, which included a requirement that airlines quickly provide victim information to the State Department. It wasn’t until the TWA Flight 800 explosion in 1996, however, that relatives put pressure on the government to write a rule carrying it out. The information will be destroyed once the flight reaches its destination; also, airlines may not use it for marketing.