Less than five minutes after takeoff, Wright's plane lay smashed, his passenger mortally injured, and the world got an early taste of the perils of flying. It was the first fatal airplane crash in history, according to the Flight Safety Foundation.
"The aeroplane is still far within the experimental stage," a New York Times writer lamented three days later. "The perfected machine will doubtless be different from it in everything from principle to motive power."
A hundred years later modern jets have indeed made air travel the safest way to get around. Yet, to the consternation of the airline industry, flying still generates for many the same rush of anxiety that onlookers must have felt when Wright's plane dove into the parade ground at Ft. Myer, Va."There's still this mystique about flying," said Ron Nielsen, a retired US Airways pilot who's found a second career counseling people who are afraid to fly. "There's a fear of being closed in, and there's a fear of dying."
It doesn't help when airlines are caught failing to follow government safety regulations, as was the case with American Airlines and Southwest Airlines earlier this year.
Anxiety levels may also rise when members of Congress accuse the Federal Aviation Administration of an inappropriately cozy relationship with the airlines it regulates. In response to reports of lapses in FAA oversight, the House passed a law in July that would force federal aviation inspectors to wait two years before taking airline jobs.
