Freedom of flight is tainted by terror

Les ABEND is a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy, steady, smart and calm in the face of an emergency, just the sort of chap you’d want piloting your jetliner cross-country, which is exactly what he does for a living. But he’s not sure how long he’s going to be doing it. Flying isn’t as much fun as it used to be.

Part of the fading-fun factor, Abend said the other day on a layover in L.A., is the terrorist element. He doesn’t think about it every moment exactly, but once in awhile it flashes through his mind, like when he was flying from New York to Chicago recently and coming in over Lake Michigan on a day as bright as heaven.

Right below him was the Sears Tower, looming upward into the clear, blue sky, and he couldn’t help but think of the twin towers on that September day in 2001, when America was brought to its knees by Islamic terrorists.

“Terrorism isn’t the only element that has made me think of retiring,” he says, “but it’s one of them.”

At 47, Abend never thought he’d be saying that. None of us, back in the halcyon days before Sept. 11, thought about the kinds of dangers we now have to consider every time we board a commercial jetliner. White-knuckle fliers had always feared the bird might crash for any number of reasons, but not because madmen with box cutters would fly it into a building.

I first met Abend a week after the twin towers attack when I flew American Airlines Flight 34, which he was piloting from LAX to New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. It was on the same kind of aircraft, a Boeing 767, that was hijacked by terrorists and flown into the World Trade Center.

He agreed to an interview after the plane landed at JFK. We met in a corner of the airport where, in a tone leveled by sadness, he talked about the grief he had felt for those who had died on that fiery September day. It would take a long time to get over it, he said.

“I have flown the very planes they used as missiles,” Abend added. “This is personal.”

We met again, this time in L.A., and his grief has been lessened by time. He only thinks about the terrorist dangers once in awhile, he says. He feels that, with armed federal personnel aboard the airliners, security is good, and it’s getting better.

At first Abend, who writes a monthly column for Flying Magazine, didn’t like the idea of guns in the cockpit. He feared their accessibility to others. He wrote about it and, if you’ll forgive the phrase, came under intense fire by those who loudly disagreed. He learned that sometimes writing a column can be more stressful than flying a jetliner.

Federal marshals carry guns aboard commercial passenger planes and federal flight deck officers, or FDOs, carry them in the cockpit in lockboxes. The idea of guns on the flight deck was anathema to Abend at first, but when he learned of the kind of training the FDOs must endure to be a part of the program, he decided that it was safe. As he puts it, “I softened.”

But even with guns aboard and security measures in place, there are gaps in the system meant to keep us safe.

A year ago, he says, a box cutter was found in a food cart by one of the flight attendants. “I had to evaluate the risk,” Abend said, “and I decided it was probably left there accidentally by someone actually opening a box. We continued the flight.”

His crews are “proactive” when it comes to searching out possible dangers. The era of terrorism has made them more aware of the need to be alert.

When I interviewed flight attendants a week after Sept. 11, they were edgy. Now, says Abend, they’ve gone through “the stages of grief” and are dealing calmly and efficiently with whatever questionable situation arises.

I guess what I was seeking from Abend was some assurance that it was OK to fly, which I got. He spends his life doing it, and, while possessing a deep concern for his passengers, he doesn’t go to work filled with dread. But one cannot escape a sense of sadness in his realization that what was once fun no longer is.

Terrorism has changed our world in many ways. Since Sept. 11, I have flown thousands of miles aboard passenger jets, and sometimes, when I’m in a U.S.-registered airliner flying overseas, I have a twinge of apprehension. Once simply envied, Americans are now hated, and we’re targets. Not just soldiers or leaders, but ordinary people with ordinary children living ordinary lives.

For Abend, that realization is draining away his fun and, in a big way, ours too.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.