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Holiday travel may take further hit
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November 12, 2001: 2:35 p.m. ET
Plane crash, regardless of cause, is likely to affect some fliers' decisions
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The crash of American Airlines Flight 587 near JFK Airport Monday morning may push already nervous travelers to cancel or change their Thanksgiving travel plans.
Whether the crash was due to mechanical failure or an act of terror, "anytime you have an accident it deters travel," said Tom Parsons, founder and president of Bestfares.com. "There'll always be a drop in business." Even if the crash was unrelated to Sept. 11, he added, "It will have an effect on some people."
As it is, before the crash Monday, the AAA predicted that Thanksgiving air travel would be down about 25 percent from last year and that 87 percent of travelers this year would be using cars to get to their destinations, the highest percentage on record.
Travel agencies that CNN/Money spoke to after the crash, including Bestfares.com, Travelocity.com and Cheap Tickets said they hadn't received a rash of cancellations, but conceded it was still early. And one Liberty Travel store manager said he had received calls from nervous customers but no cancellations yet.
A number of agencies said that should customers wish to cancel their trips in the upcoming weeks on American, or any other airline, that they would follow whatever guidelines the airlines had set regarding cancellations and refunds. When asked at a midday press conference whether nervous American Airlines customers may ask for a refund or a postponement of their travel, Al Becker, a spokesman for American Airlines' parent AMR Corp., said, "Oh yes, absolutely." There is, however, no written statement yet from the airline confirming that.
On Wall Street, travel-related stocks were among the hardest hit Monday. By mid-afternoon, American Airlines' parent, AMR Corp. (AMR: down $1.64 to $16.49, Research, Estimates), was down $2.26, or 12.5 percent, to $15.87. Travelocity.com (TVLY: down $1.46 to $14.10, Research, Estimates) fell $0.96, or 6.17 percent, to $14.60; while
Expedia Inc. (EXPE: down $1.26 to $29.96, Research, Estimates), was down $1.22, or 3.9 percent, to $30.00.
Odds still in favor of flying
While the cause of the American Airlines crash is unknown, it would be a mistake to assume it had to do with an act of terror, Parsons said. Crashes due to mechanical failure are a fact of airline travel. "It's not uncommon through a normal year to lose a plane," Parsons said. "John Q Public needs to understand that we do have accidents. It's usually in the first eight minutes up and in the last eight minutes down."
But the safety odds still are heavily in favor of the airline passenger considering that millions of people fly every year and tens of thousands of flights take off daily, Parsons said.
Indeed, the National Safety Council reports that the odds of dying in a plane crash were one in 391,000 in 1998, the most recent year for which data are available. The odds of dying in a car accident were far greater at 1 in 6,200. 
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