People Back Shooting Down Hijackers
By WILL LESTER
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Six in 10 Americans favor giving the U.S. military the authority to shoot down passenger planes hijacked for terrorism, says an Associated Press poll. There is overwhelming public support for armed sky marshals and intensive airport security.
The levels of flying fear appear to be returning to what they were before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
While a majority favored the military shootdowns, support was considerably lower than the nine in 10 who back placing armed sky marshals on planes and say they're willing to wait in long lines to allow for additional airport security procedures.
Four in 10 in the poll conducted for The AP by ICR of Media, Pa., weren't ready to support a military shootdown, with 25 percent opposed and another 15 percent saying they don't know how they feel about the policy. Two-thirds of men supported that measure, compared with half of women.
Even among those who favored the shootdown policy, some conceded it is a very tough call.
"What if all other passengers were as courageous as the ones in Pennsylvania?" said David Lidston, a 29-year-old cabinet maker from Naples, Maine. "You have to give the passengers a chance, but if it comes down to the last minute, you've got to do it."
He was referring to an apparent rebellion by hijacked passengers of a United Airlines flight over Pennsylvania that may have brought the plane down before it could be used as a flying weapon in another act of terrorism.
"It's hard to say whether they should authorize shootdowns," said 68-year-old retiree Charles Magee of Albany, N.Y. "That's a tough question. American people are up there."
While flying fears appear to be declining since the attacks, women are now three times as likely as men to say they're afraid of flying.
Six in 10 women said they are bothered by flying, including just over a quarter, 27 percent, who said they are afraid, according to the poll. Only three in 10 men said they are bothered by flying; 10 percent said they are afraid.
"With all this going on, I have no desire to fly," said Janice Inselberg, a 47-year-old preschool teacher from Fort Washington, Pa. "When I was younger, I loved to fly."
Traditionally, women have been more willing than men to admit to pollsters their anxieties on many matters, including their fear of flying. The differences between the genders on flying fears have not always been as pronounced, however.
Overall, fears of flying are returning gradually to levels seen before the terrorist attacks, with 19 percent of Americans saying they're afraid and 29 percent saying they're slightly bothered by flying. Half said they weren't bothered at all. Those levels of concern are slightly higher than before the attacks, though concerns spiked upward soon after the planes were hijacked.
Some other groups also had more fear of flying.
Those with less than a high school education and those who made less than $25,000 a year were far more likely than others to say they were afraid. The poll of 1,008 adults was taken Oct. 5 through Wednesday and has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The number of passengers on commercial planes has been gradually climbing since the attacks, though passenger capacity remains a fourth to half below the levels before the Sept. 11 attacks. Disturbances by unruly passengers aboard passenger planes in the last week that brought military jets scrambling to escort the planes back to airports in Chicago and Shreveport, La., highlighted continued tensions about air travel.
U.S. airlines have laid off almost 100,000 employees in the past month and received a $15 billion government bailout that is expected to prevent all but a few of them from going bankrupt by next summer.
Several in the poll who said they favor the placement of armed sky marshals aboard passenger planes wondered why some of these security steps hadn't been taken years ago.
"When you look at all the terrorism that has already happened all over the world, I'm surprised they hadn't already started using air marshals," said Lidston, the Maine cabinet maker. "I don't know what happened. I think America was dreaming for a while."
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