Airport. Part 13

Mel inspected the cause of complaint. At the Avis counter a bold display card read: A s.h.i.+NE WHILE YOU SIGN With Our Compliments * * * We're Trying Harder Still!

Beneath, at floor level, was a rotating electric shoe polisher, positioned so that anyone standing at the counter could do what the notice said.

Mel was half amused; the other half of his mind accepted Egan Jeffers' complaint. Half-kidding or not, Jeffers was within his rights. His contract spelled out that no one else at the airport could s.h.i.+ne shoes, just as Jeffers himself could not rent cars or sell newspapers. Each concessionaire received the same kind of protection in return for the substantial portion of his profits which the airport appropriated for itself.

With Egan Jeffers watching, Mel crossed to the car-rental booth. He consulted his pocket panic lista slim booklet containing private telephone numbers of senior airport personnel. The Avis manager was listed. The girl behind the counter switched on an automatic smile as he approached. Mel instructed her, "Let me use your phone."

She protested, "Sir, it's not a public..."

"I'm the airport manager." Mel reached across, picked up the telephone and dialed. Not being recognized in his own airport was a frequent experience. Most of Mel's work kept him behind scenes, away from public areas, so that those who worked there seldom saw him.

Listening to the ringing tone, he wished that other problems could be settled as swiftly and simply as this one was going to be.

It took a dozen rings, then several minutes more of waiting, before the Avis manager's voice came on the line. "Ken Kingsley here."

"I might have needed a car," Mel said. "Where were you?"

"Playing with my kid's trains. Take my mind off automobilesand people who call me about them."

"Must be great to have a boy," Mel said. "I just have girls. Is your boy mechanically minded?"

"An eight-year-old genius. Any time you need him to run that toy airport of yours, let me know."

"Sure will, Ken." Mel winked at Egan Jeffers. "There is one thing he might do now. He could set up a shoes.h.i.+ne machine at home. I happen to know where there's one surplus. So do you."

There was a silence, then the Avis manager sighed. "Why is it you guys always want to stifle a little honest sales promotion?"

"Mostly because we're mean and ornery. But we can make it stick. Remember that contract clause?any change in display s.p.a.ce must have prior approval of airport management. Then there's the one about not infringing on other lessees' business."

"I get it," Kingsley said. "Egan Jeffers has been beefing."

"Let's say he isn't cheering."

"Okay, you win. I'll tell my people to yank the d.a.m.n thing. Is there any fat rush?" "Not really," Mel said. "Any time in the next half hour will do."

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

But he could hear the Avis man chuckling as he hung up.

Egan Jeffers nodded approvingly, his wide grin still in place. Mel brooded: I'm the friendly airport fun man; I make everybody happy. He wished he could do the same thing for himself.

"You handled that A-OK, Bakersfeld," Jeffers said. "Just stay on the ball so it don't happen again." At a businesslike pace, still beaming, he headed for the "up" escalator.

Mel followed more slowly. On the main concourse level, at the Trans America counters, a milling crowd was in front of two positions marked: Special Check-in Flight Two The Golden Argosy Rome Nonstop Nearby, Tanya Livingston was talking animatedly with a group of pa.s.sengers. She signaled Mel and, after a moment or two, came over to join him. "I mustn't stop; it's like a madhouse here. I thought you were going downtown."

"My plans changed," Mel said. "For that matter, I thought you were going off duty."

"The D.T.M. asked if I'd stay. We're trying to get The Golden Argosy away on time. It's supposed to be for prestige, though I suspect the real reason is, Captain Demerest doesn't like to be kept waiting."

"You're letting prejudice carry you away." Mel grinned. "Though sometimes I do, too."

Tanya gestured down the concourse to a raised platform with a circular counter surrounding it, a few yards from where they were standing. "That's what your big fight with your brother-in-law was all about; why Captain Demerest is so mad at you. Isn't it?"

Tanya was pointing to the airport's insurance-vending booth. A dozen or more people were ranged around the circular counter, most of them completing application forms for air trip insurance. Behind the counter, two attractive girls, one a striking blonde with big b.r.e.a.s.t.s, were busy writing policies.

"Yes," Mel acknowledged, "that was most of our troubleat least, recently. Vernon and the Air Line Pilots a.s.sociation think we should abolish insurance booths at airports, and insurance policy vending machines. I don't. The two of us had a battle about it in front of the Board of Airport Commissioners. What Vernon didn't like, and still doesn't, is that I won."

"I heard," Tanya looked at Mel searchingly. "Some of us don't agree with you. This time we think Captain Demerest is right."

Mel shook his head. "Then we'll have to disagree. I've been over it all so many times; Vernon's arguments just don't make sense."

They hadn't made any more sensein Mel's opinionthat day a month ago, at Lincoln International, when Vernon Demerest had appeared before an Airport Commissioners meeting. Vernon requested the hearing, and had represented the Air Line Pilots a.s.sociation, which was waging a campaign to outlaw insurance vending at airports everywhere.

Mel remembered the details of the session clearly. It was a regular Board of Airport Commissioners meeting, on a Wednesday morning in the airport board room. Ali five commissioners were present: Mrs. Mildred Ackerman, an attractive brunette housewife who was rumored to be a mistress of the mayor, hence her appointment; and her four male colleaguesa university professor, who was Board chairman, two local businessmen, and a retired union official.

The Board room was a mahogany paneled chamber, in the terminal, on the executive mezzanine. At one end, on a raised platform, the commissioners sat in reclining leather chairs behind a handsome elliptical-shaped table. At a lower level was a second table, less elaborate. Here Mel Bakersfeld presided, flanked by his department heads. Alongside was a press table and, at the rear, a section for the public, since Board meetings were nominally open. The public section was rarely occupied.

Today the only outsider, apart from commissioners and staff, was Captain Vernon Demerest, smartly attired in Trans America uniform, his four gold stripes of rank bright under the overhead lights. He sat waiting in the public section, with books and papers spread over two other chairs beside him. Courteously, the Board elected to hear Captain Demerest first, ahead of its regular business.

Demerest rose. He addressed the Board with his usual self-a.s.surance, and referred only occasionally to his notes. He was appearing, he explained, on behalf of the Air Line Pilots a.s.sociation, of which he was a local council chairman. However, the views he would expound were equally his own, and were shared by most pilots of all airlines.

The commissioners settled back in their reclining chairs to listen. Airport insurance vending, Demerest began, was a ridiculous, archaic hangover from flying's early days. The very presence of insurance booths and machines, their prominence in airport concourses, were insults to commercial aviation, which bad a finer safety record, in relation to miles traveled, than any other form of transportation. In a railway station or bus depot, or on boarding an ocean liner, or driving his own car from a parking garage, did a departing traveler have special insurance policies, against death and mutilation, thrust beneath his nose with subtle sales pressure? Of course not!

Then why aviation?

Demerest answered his own question. The reason, he declared, was that insurance companies knew a rich bonanza when they saw it, "and never mind the consequences." Commercial aviation was still sufficiently new so that many people thought of traveling by air as hazardous, despite the provable fact that an individual was safer in a commercial airliner than in his own home. This inherent mistrust of flying was magnified on the exceedingly rare occasions when an airline accident occurred. The impact was dramatic, and obscured the fact that far more deaths and injuries occurred in other, more accepted ways.

The truth about the safety of flying, Demerest pointed out, was attested by insurance companies themselves. Airline pilots, whose exposure to air travel was far greater than that of pa.s.sengers, could buy standard life insurance at regular rates and, through their own group plans, at even lower rates than the general populace.

Yet other insurance companies, abetted by greedy airport managements, and with the docile acquiescence of airlines, continued to batten on the fears and gullibility of air travelers.

Listening, at the staff table, Mel conceded mentally that his brother-in-law was making a lucid presentation, though the reference to "greedy airport managements" had been unwise. The remark had produced frowns from several of the five commissioners, including Mrs. Ackerman.

Vernon Demerest seemed not to notice. "Now, madam and gentlemen, we come to the most significant, the vital point."

This, he declared, was the very real danger, to every air pa.s.senger and to all flying crews, created by irresponsible, casual sales of insurance policies at airport counters, and by vending machines... "policies promising vast sums, fortunes, in return for a mere few dollars' premium."

Demerest continued heatedly: "The systemif you choose to dignify a public disservice by calling it a system... and most pilots don'toffers a gilt-edged, open invitation to maniacs and criminals to engage in sabotage and ma.s.s murder. Their objectives need be only the simplest: personal reward for themselves or their expected beneficiaries."

"Captain!" The woman commissioner, Mrs. Ackerman, was leaning forward in her chair. From her voice and expression, Mel guessed she was doing a slow burn about the "greedy airport managements" remark. "Captain, we're hearing a whole lot of your opinions. Do you have any facts to back up all this?"

"Indeed I do, madam. There are many facts."

Vernon Demerest had prepared his case thoroughly. Using charts and graphs, he demonstrated that known in-flight disasters caused by bombings or other acts of violence averaged one and one half per year. Motives varied, but a consistent, prevalent cause was financial gain from flight insurance. As well, there had been additional bombing attempts which either failed or were prevented, and other disasters where sabotage was suspected but not proved.

He named cla.s.sic incidents: Canadian Pacific Airlines, 1949 and 1965; Western Airlines, 1957; National Airlines, 1960 and a suspected sabotage in 1959; two Mexican airlines, 1952 and 1953; Venezuelan Airlines, 1960; Continental Airlines, 1962; Pacific Air Lines, 1964; United Air Lines, 1950, 1955, and a suspected sabotage in 1965. In nine of the thirteen incidents, all pa.s.sengers and crew members perished.

It was true, of course, that where sabotage was exposed, any insurance policies which had been taken out by those involved were automatically invalidated. In short: sabotage didn't pay, and normal, informed people were aware of this. They also knew that even after an air disaster from which there were no survivors, providing wreckage was located, it was possible to tell whether an explosion had occurred and, usually, by what means. But it was not normal people, Demerest reminded the commissioners, who committed bombings or savage acts of violence. It was the abnormal, the psychopaths, the criminally insane, the conscienceless ma.s.s killers. Those kind of people were seldom well-informed, and even if they were, the psychopathic mind had a way of perceiving only what it wanted to, of bending facts to suit what it was convenient to believe.

Mrs. Ackerman made an interjection again; this time her hostility to Demerest was unmistakable. "I'm not sure any of us, even you, Captain, have qualifications to discuss what goes on in the mind of psychopaths."

"I wasn't discussing it," Demerest said impatiently. "In any case, that isn't the point."

"Pardon me, you were discussing it. And I happen to think it is the point."

Vernon Demerest flushed. He was accustomed to command, not to being questioned. His temper, never far below the surface, flashed. "Madam, are you normally stupid or just being deliberately obtuse?"

The Board chairman rapped sharply with his gavel, and Mel Bakersfeld resisted the urge to laugh.

Well, Mel thought, we might as well finish right now. Vernon should stick to flying, which he was good at, and avoid diplomacy, where he had just struck out. The chances of the Airport Board doing anything which Captain Demerest wanted were, at this moment, minus nilat least unless Mel helped Demerest out. For a moment he wondered if he should. He suspected Demerest realized he had gone too far. However, there was still time to turn what had just happened into a joke which everyone could laugh at, including Mildred Ackerman. Mel had a knack for doing that kind of thing, for making differences amenable, at the same time saving face for those on both sides. Also, he knew he was a favorite of Millie Ackerman's; they got on well together, and she always listened attentively to anything Mel might say.

Then he decided: the h.e.l.l with it. He doubted if his brother-in-law would do the same thing if their situations were reversed. Let Vernon get out of the mess himself. In any case, Mel was going to have his own say in a few minutes' time.

"Captain Demerest," the Board chairman observed coldly, "that last remark is uncalled for, out of order, and you will please withdraw it."

Demerest's features were still flushed. Momentarily he hesitated, then nodded. "Very well, I withdraw it." He glanced at Mrs. Ackerman. "I beg the lady's pardon. Perhaps she can understand that this is a subject which I, like most commercial flying crews, feel strongly about. When there's something which seems to me so obvious..." He left the sentence incomplete.

Mrs. Ackerman was glaring. The apology, such as it was, Mel thought, had been handled badly. Now it was too late to smooth things over, even if he wanted to.

One of the other commissioners asked, "Captain, what exactly do you want from us?"

Demerest took a pace forward. His voice became persuasive. "I'm appealing to you for abolition of insurance machines and over-the-counter insurance vending at this airport, and a promise that you will refuse to rent s.p.a.ce, ever again, for the same purpose."

"You'd abolish insurance sales entirely?"

"At airportsyes. I may say, madam and gentlemen, that the Air Line Pilots a.s.sociation is urging other airports to do the same thing. We're also asking Congress to take action to make airport insurance sales illegal."

"What would be the point of doing that in the United States, when air travel is international?"

Demerest smiled faintly. "This campaign is international, too."

"How international?"

"We have the active support of pilots' groups in forty-eight other countries. Most believe that if an example were set in North America, either by the U.S. or Canada, others would follow." The same commissioner said skeptically, "I'd say you're all expecting quite a lot."

"Surely," the chairman interjected, "the public is ent.i.tled to buy air travel iniurance if they want it."

Demerest nodded agreement. "Of course. No one is saying they can't."

"Yes, you are." It was Mrs. Ackerman again.

The muscles around Demerest's mouth tightened. "Madam, anyone can get all the travel insurance he wants. All he needs have is the elementary foresight to make arrangements in advancethrough any insurance broker or even a travel agency." His glance took in the other commissioners. "Nowadays a good many people carry a blanket accident policy for travel; then they make all the trips they want, and they're insured permanently. There are plenty of ways of doing it. As an example, the major credit card companiesDiners, American Express, Carte Blancheall offer permanent travel insurance to their card holders; it can be renewed automatically each year, and billed."

Most businessmen who traveled, Demerest pointed out, had at least one of the credit cards he had named, so abolition of airport insurance need impose no hards.h.i.+p nor inconvenience on business people.

"And with all these blanket policies, the rates are low. I know, because I have that kind of policy myself." Vernon Demerest paused, then continued, "The important thing about all these insurance policies is that they go through channels. The applications are handled by experienced people; a day or so elapses between an application and the issuance of the policy. Because of this, there is a far better chance of the psychotic, the maniac, the unbalanced individual being noticed, his intentions questioned.

"Another thing to rememberan insane or unbalanced person is a creature of impulse. Where flight insurance is concerned, this impulse is catered to by the quickie, no-questions-asked policies available from airport vending machines and at insurance counters."

"I think we all get the point you're making," the chairman said sharply. "You're beginning to repeat yourself, Captain."

Mrs. Ackerman nodded. "I agree. Personally, I'd like to hear what Mr. Bakersfeld has to say."

The eyes of the commissioners swung toward Mel. He acknowledged. "Yes, I do have some observations. But I'd prefer to wait until Captain Demerest is completely finished."

"He's finished," Mildred Ackerman said. "We just decided."

One of the other commissioners laughed, and the chairman rapped with his gravel. "Yes, I really think so... If you please, Mr. Bakersfeld."

As Mel rose, Vernon Demerest returned, glowering, to his seat.

"I may as well make it clear," Mel began, "that I take the opposite point of view to just about everything Vernon has said. I guess you could call it a family disagreement."

The commissioners, who were aware of Mel's relations.h.i.+p by marriage to Vernon Demerest, smiled, and already, Mel sensed, the tension of a few minutes earlier had lessened. He was used to these meetings and knew that informality was always the best approach. Vernon could have found that out, tooif he had taken the trouble to inquire.

"There are several points we ought to think about," Mel continued. "First, let's face up to the fact that most people have always had an inherent fear of flying, and I'm convinced that feeling will always exist, no matter how much progress we make, and however much we improve our safety record. Incidentally, the one point on which I agree with Vernon is that our safety record is exceedingly good already."

He went on: Because of this inherent fear, many pa.s.sengers felt more comfortable, more rea.s.sured, with air trip insurance. They wanted it. They also wanted it to be obtainable at airports, a fact proven by the enormous volume of sales from vending machines and airport insurance booths. It was a matter of freedom that pa.s.sengers should have the right, and the opportunity, to buy insurance or not. As for getting the insurance ahead of time, the plain fact was that most people didn't think of it. Besides, Mel added, if flight insurance were sold this way, a great deal of revenue to airportsincluding Lincoln Internationalwould be lost. At the mention of airport revenue, Mel smiled. The airport commissioners smiled with him.

That was the crux of it, of course, Mel realized. Revenue from the insurance concessions was too important to lose. At Lincoln International, the airport gained half a million dollars annually from commissions on insurance sales, though few purchasers realized that the airport appropriated twenty-five cents from every premium dollar. Yet insurance represented the fourth largest concession, with only parking, restaurants, and auto rentals producing larger sums for the airport's coffers. At other big airports, insurance revenue was similar or higher. It was all very well, Mel reflected, for Vernon Demerest to talk about "greedy airport managements," but that kind of money had a way of talking, too.

Mel decided not to put his thoughts into speech. His single brief reference to revenue was enough. The commissioners, who were familiar with the airport's financial affairs, would get the point. He consulted his notes. They were notes which one of the insurance companies doing business at Lincoln International had supplied him with yesterday. Mel had not asked for the notes, nor had he mentioned to anyone outside his own office that today's insurance debate was coming up. But the insurance people had somehow learned, and it was extraordinary how they always didthen acted promptly to protect their interests.

Mel would not have used the notes if they had run counter to his own honestly held opinions. Fortunately, they did not. "Now," Mel said, "about sabotagepotential and otherwise." He was aware of the board members listening intently. "Vernon has talked quite a lot about thatbut I must say, having listened carefully, that most of his remarks seemed to me to be overstatements. Actually, the proven incidents of air disasters because of insurance-inspired bombings have been very few."

In the spectator section, Captain Demerest shot to his feet. "Great G.o.d!how many disasters do we need to have?"

The chairman rapped sharply with his gavel. "Captain... if you please!"

Mel waited until Demerest subsided, then continued calmly, "Since the question has been asked, the answer is 'none.' A more pertinent question is: Might not the disasters still have occurred, even if airport-purchased insurance had not been available?"

Mel paused, to let his point sink home, before continuing. "It can be argued, of course, that if airport insurance had not been available, the disasters we are talking about might never have happened at all. In other words, these were crimes of impulse, triggered by the ease with which airport insurance can be bought. Similarly, it can be contended that even if the crimes were contemplated in advance, they might not have been carried through had flight insurance been less readily available. Those, I think, are Vernon's argumentsand the ALPA's."

Mel glanced briefly at his brother-in-law who gave no sign beyond a scowl.

"The glaring weakness of all those arguments," Mel maintained, "is that they are purely suppositional. It seems to me just as likely that someone planning such a crime would not be deterred by the absence of airport insurance, but would merely obtain their insurance elsewhere, whichas Vernon himself pointed outis a simple thing to do."

Expressed another way, Mel pointed out, flight insurance appeared only a secondary motive of would-be saboteurs, and not a prime reason for their crime. The real motives, when aerial sabotage occurred, were based on age-old human weaknesses--love triangles, greed, business failures, suicide.

As long as there had been human beings, Mel argued, it had proven impossible to eliminate these motives. Therefore, those concerned with aviation safety and sabotage prevention should seek, not to abolish airport flight insurance, but to strengthen other precautionary measures in the air and on the ground. One such measure was stricter control of the sale of dynamitethe princ.i.p.al tool used by most aerial saboteurs to date. Another proposal was development of "sniffer" devices to detect explosives in baggage. One such device, Mel informed the attentive Airport Commissioners, was already in experimental use.

A third ideaurged by flight insurance companieswas that pa.s.sengers' baggage be opened for examination before flight, in the same way that happened with Customs inspection now. However, Mel concluded, the last idea presented obvious difficulties.

There should be stricter enforcement, he claimed, of existing laws prohibiting the carrying of side arms on commercial airliners. And airplane design should be studied in relation to sabotage, with the objective that aircraft could better endure an internal explosion. In that connection, one ideaalso advocated by the insurance vending companieswas for an inner skin of baggage compartments to be made stronger and heavier than at present, even at the price of increased weight and decreased airline revenue.

The FAA, Mel pointed out, had made a study of airport insurance and subsequently opposed any ban on airport sales. Mel glanced at Vernon Demerest, who was glowering. Both knew that the FAA "study" was a sore point with the airline pilots since it had been made by an insurance company executivean aviation insurance man himselfwhose impartiality was highly suspect.

There were several more points remaining in the insurance company notes which Mel had not yet touched on, but he decided he had said enough. Besides, some of the remaining arguments were less convincing. He even had serious doubts, now that he had made it, about the baggage compartment suggestion of a moment or two ago. Who would the extra weight be for, he wonderedthe pa.s.sengers, airlines, or mostly for the flight insurance companies? But the other arguments, he thought, were sound enough.