At airports and travel agencies yesterday, the crash of an American Eagle commuter aircraft Tuesday -- the second in two months -- set off ripples of concern, fear and resignation, but led to few cancellations.
For the most part, travel agents said the reaction to the crash near Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina was considerably more muted than the rush of calls they received after the USAir crash in Pittsburgh on Sept. 8 in which 132 lost their lives on a Boeing 737-300 jet.
"We have done some checking, and we are not seeing major shifts" in travel plans, said Doug Cody, director of communications and public relations for Carlson Wagon Lit, which owns 4,000 travel agencies in 125 countries. "But we are seeing more curiosity about what type of aircraft people are flying."
Ann P. McGee, a consultant for Convington International Travel in Richmond, Va., said: "Every time a plane goes down, we get calls. First they didn't want to be on USAir, now it's American. Tomorrow it could be Delta. People tend to forget. They put it on the back burner when we go a while without one. And one of these planes could go down anytime. I wish these planes would quit falling."
Lately, it has been commuter aircraft making people nervous.
After the recent crashes and the Federal Aviation Administration's decision last week to bar the ATR-72, a type of aircraft often used by commuter lines, from flying in icy conditions, some travelers said they now intended to take extreme measures to avoid small planes, even if it meant hours of extra travel.
But at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, frequent travelers said there wasn't much they could do to avoid the risks.
"We have to fly to make a living," said Glenn Reese, 43, a printer for W. R. Grace who flew into BWI yesterday from Chicago. "We either fly or get fired."
A number of travel agents said their corporate clients had called to express concern about the need to send employees aloft in commuter planes.
Gusty Taler, a spokeswoman for U.S. Travel, which has 900 offices worldwide, said: "In areas where weather is a major worry, some of our corporate clients have expressed concern about putting their employees on commuter flights. We are trying our best to meet those concerns."
Michael Goodstein, president of Travel by Rusty Inc., an agency in North Miami Beach, Fla., said that in the past, speed not safety was uppermost in the minds of the business travelers he works with.
"Normally, my corporate clients would fly by time, regardless of commuter or not," he said. "Now, most of them would rather not get on commuters, if they can avoid it."