Airport (26 page)

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 advance–through 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 companies–Diners, American Express, Carte Blanche–all 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 hardship 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 remember–an 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 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 were 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 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 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
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 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 so obviously want.”

As Mel resumed his seat, Mildred Ackerman said promptly and emphatically, “I’d say no.” She shot Vernon Demerest a glance of triumph.

With minimum formality the other commissioners agreed, then adjourned, leaving other business until afternoon.

In the corridor outside, Vernon Demerest was waiting for Mel.

“Hi, Vernon!” Mel spoke quickly, making an effort at conciliation before his brother-in-law could speak. “No hard feelings, I hope. Even friends and relatives have to differ now and then.”

The “friends” was, of course, an overstatement. Mel Bakersfeld and Vernon Demerest had never liked each other, despite Demerest’s marriage to Mel’s sister, Sarah, and both men knew it; also, of late, the dislike had sharpened to open antagonism.

“You’re damn right there are hard feellings,” Demerest said. The peak of his anger had passed, but his eyes were hard.

The commissioners, now filing out from the Board room, looked curiously at them both. The commissioners were on their way to lunch. In a few minutes Mel would join them.

Demerest said contemptuously, “It’s easy for people like you–ground-bound, desk-tied, with penguins’ minds. If you were in the air as often as I am, you’d have a difforent point of view.”

Mel said sharply, “I wasn’t always flying a desk.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake! Don’t hand me that hero veteran crap. You’re at zero-feet now; the way you think shows it. If you weren’t, you’d see this insurance deal the way any self-respecting pilot does.”

“You’re sure you mean self-respecting, not self-adoring?” If Vernon wanted a slanging match, Mel decided, he could have one. There was no one else within hearing now. “The trouble with most of you pilots is you’ve become so used to thinking of yourselves as demigods and captains of the clouds, you’ve convinced yourselves your brains are something wonderful too. Well, except in a few specialized ways, they’re not. Sometimes I think the rest of what you have has addled through sitting up in that rarefied air too long while automatic pilots do the work. So when someone comes up with an honest opinion which happens to run counter to your own, you behave like spoiled little children.”

“I’ll let all that stuff go,” Demerest said, “though if anybody’s childish it’s you right now. What’s more to the point is that you’re dishonest.”

“Now look, Vernon…”

“An honest opinion, you said.” Demerest snorted in disgust. “Honest opinion, my eye! In there, you were using an insurance company poop sheet. You were reading from it! I could see from where I was sitting, and I know because I have a copy myself.” He touched the pile of books and papers he was carrying. “You didn’t even have the decency, or take the trouble, to prepare a case yourself.”

Mel flushed. His brother-in-law had caught him out. He
should
have prepared his own case, or at least adapted the insurance company’s notes and had them retyped. It was true he had been busier than usual for several days before the meeting, but that was no excuse.

“Some day you may regret this,” Vernon Demerest said. “If you do, and I’m around, I’ll be the one to remind you of today. Until then, I can do without seeing you any more than I have to.”

Before Mel could reply, his brother-in-law had turned and gone.

REMEMBERING now, with Tanya beside him in the main terminal concourse, Mel wondered–as he had several times since–if he could not have handled the clash with Vernon a good deal better. He had an uneasy feeling that he had behaved badly. He could still have differed with his brother-in-law; even now Mel saw no reason to change his point of view. But he could have done it more good-naturedly, avoiding the tactlessness which was a part of Vernon Demerest’s makeup, but not of Mel’s.

There had been no confrontation, since that day, between the two of them; the near-encounter with Demerest in the airport coffee shop tonight had been Mel’s first sight of his brother-in-law since the airport commissioners’ meeting. Mel had never been close to his older sister, Sarah, and they seldom visited each other’s homes. Yet sooner or later, Mel and Vernon Demerest would have to meet, if not to resolve their differences, at least to shelve them. And, Mel thought, judging by the strongly worded snow committee report–unquestionably inspired by Vernon’s antagonism–the sooner it happened, the better.

“I wouldn’t have mentioned the insurance bit,” Tanya said, “if I’d known it would send you so far away from me.”