Fearful but Determined Passengers Fly to See Loved Ones for Holiday

A week ago, Maria Frost of Huntington Beach was wishing she hadn’t made plans to fly to Dallas with her husband and 10-month-old baby to visit her brother for Thanksgiving.

“I was terrified,” she said. “Especially putting the whole new little family on the same plane.”

But Sunday afternoon, Frost held her smiling baby and looked on as her husband, Jamie, who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the American flag, loaded one piece of bulky baby paraphernalia after another off the luggage carrier at John Wayne Airport in Orange County.

It had been a good trip. She was glad they had gone.

For many Southern California travelers like Frost, the Thanksgiving holiday marked their first passage through airport gates to board an airliner since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

As thousands returned home Sunday--touching ground, unloading luggage, battling crowds and traffic--the sentiment was not so much an expression of travel frustration as it was a collective sigh of relief.

“I’ve never been one of those people that had to kiss the ground when they land,” Frost said. “But I feel like it today.”

At Los Angeles International Airport, long lines of travelers stretched outside baggage claim checkpoints. Even so, there were many vacant parking spaces, a reflection of an estimated 20% decline in air travel nationwide.

About 175,000 travelers passed through LAX on Sunday. Over the five-day Thanksgiving travel period, passengers totaled 690,000, a 25% decline from last year, said airport spokesman Paul Haney.

“Everything was very routine for one of the busiest travel days,” he said.

John Wayne Airport spokeswoman Ann McCarley said the airport was bustling and the passenger load was expected to be as heavy this Thanksgiving as it was last year, when 28,035 people flew in on the Sunday after the holiday.

Margo Sbrocco of Tustin Ranch said she had decided that boarding a plane to show off her baby son to family and friends in Seattle was about more than overcoming fear. It would be her son’s first civics lesson.

“To stop seeing friends or family, that’s not how I want to raise my son,” she said, kissing baby Blake over and over after a tiresome travel day. “I want him to have faith in his country and faith in his God.”

Exhausted but content, she sat at a John Wayne luggage carousel, waiting for her husband to bring the car.

“Everybody’s gotta see the new baby,” she had reasoned over a week ago. “We just don’t feel it’s right to be paralyzed by fear.”

Michelle Korcz of Long Beach also put family over fear and had no regrets Sunday.

She had been determined to visit her family in Nashville. She could have canceled the flight and her family would have understood.

But this year’s holiday celebration was too special.

It was the first time in three years that they all--including her brother-in-law, who serves in the military and has been stationed overseas--would be reunited for Thanksgiving.

They had even planned to dress up for a professional family reunion-day portrait that included Korcz, her 7-year-old daughter, mother, three siblings, sister-in-law, brother-in-law and two nephews.

“Who knows when the opportunity will come again?” said Korcz, 30. “I don’t know--if things get worse--where my brother-in-law will be going.”

Hedda Louie also was undaunted in her resolve to unite her family for a Thanksgiving vacation. They considered canceling.

“We thought, ‘Is this wise?’ ” said Louie, 52, who was at LAX on her way back home to Sacramento. “Am I putting my family at risk unnecessarily? This is not something we have to do. Should we take a chance?”

They did.

Last week, they flew from Sacramento to Los Angeles, to take a weeklong cruise to Mexico, which had been planned for months before Sept. 11.

The family--Louie, her husband and four children--were undeterred but not fearless. Louie held hands with her 18-year-old daughter and prayed as their plane took off.

Alan Reed, 28, who moved to Los Angeles four years ago, said he considered canceling a flight to Baltimore to visit his brother, mother, father and grandmother.

Perhaps a less risky option was called for this year: a road trip to a ski weekend in Mammoth with other friends too afraid to fly.

At the last minute, Reed, who returned Sunday to Los Angeles, decided against the alternative plan.

“It was absolutely worth it,” he said. “Seeing friends and family, that’s the one thing I cannot obtain in L.A.”

In addition, he got to spend precious time with his newly engaged grandmother and her fiance. Reed’s grandmother, who is in her 70s, fell in love with an old friend.

Reed spent Saturday night with the lovebirds, listening to his soon-to-be step-grandfather play piano.

“They were like little kids,” Reed said. “What a better way to [grow old], than to be happy and in love?”

Nancy Loera of La Mirada shed tears Sunday at John Wayne Airport, proud as she watched her son board a plane back to college.

Josh, her football player son, had called her before Thanksgiving to say he was afraid to fly home.

“And that’s when I fell apart for a while,” said Loera. She too was afraid for him to fly.

But the 24-year-old linebacker in his senior year at Harding University near Little Rock, Ark., changed his mind. In what he figured was his most important defensive move of the season, he requested an aisle seat.

In case anything happened, he was prepared to become “one of the ones that you read about,” he said, referring to several heroic passengers who rushed the terrorists.