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 remember — an insane or unbalanced person is a creature of impulse. Where flight insurance in 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 gavel. “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 relationship 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, too — if 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 passengers felt more comfortable, more reassured, 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 passengers 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 was sold this way, a great deal of revenue to airports — including Lincoln International — would 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 did — then 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 sabotage — potential and otherwise.” He was aware of the board members listening intently.
“Vernon has talked quite a lot about that — but 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 God! — 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 the 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 a flight insurance been less readily available. Those, I think, are Vernon’s arguments — and 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, which — as Vernon himself pointed out — is 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 dynamite — the principal 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 idea — urged by flight insurance companies — was that passengers’ baggage be opened for examination
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 idea — also advocated by the insurance vending companies — was 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 executive — an aviation insurance man himself — whose 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 wondered — the passengers, airlines, or mostly for the flight insurance companies? But the other arguments he thought, were sound enough.
“So,” he concluded, “what we have to decide is whether, because of supposition and very little else, we should deprive the public of a service which they obviously want.”
As Mel resumed his seat, Mildred Ackerman said promptly and emphatically, “I’d say no.” She shot Vernon
