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(c) Elliott Publishing.

Travel Poetry
Err Travel · June 20, 2000

This past month, just as I filed my "final" column on this subject, one of the most frightening air rage incidents yet took place aboard an Alaska Airlines plane en route to San Francisco.

Peter Bradley, claiming now to have been whacked-out from some sort of drug interaction, came close to commandeering the controls of flight 259. Had he been successful, he surely would have cut short the lives of 48 people.

Now, a month later, I read that American Airlines, in connection with National Poetry Month, will be distributing 100,000 copies of Songs of the Open Road: Poems of Travel & Adventure on some international routes. According to the New York Times, this anthology of poems from the likes of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, E.E. Cummings, and other well-known poets is provided by the American Poetry and Literacy Project, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC.

It would be unfair to suggest that the distribution of this poetry collection is the airline's response to what seems to be, according to Michael Sheffer of the Skyrage Foundation, an accelerating number and an increasing seriousness of air rage incidents.

On the other hand, while flight attendants are handing out books of poetry, what is being done to protect us flyers from these airborne imbeciles? It does seem somewhat incongruous that a company is dispensing poetry to its customers while at the same time miscreants are perpetrating serious and dangerous crimes against its employees and customers.

Sure, we hear from the "suits" at the airlines and their trade organizations that the penalty for unruly behavior aboard airplanes should be stiffened and enforced. And now there is talk of reinforcing cockpit access doors. Hey, who wouldn't agree with all that?

But what about prevention?

What programs or training or other provisions have airlines put in place to curb this growing problem? To quote country singer Toby Keith, what we really need from them is "A little less talk and a lot more action."

Or am I railing because of professional envy? Here I am, a California psychologist, and I never even thought of poetry as a weapon against air rage. Maybe I should get ahead of this movement. Maybe in-flight aromatherapy or consciousness-centering meditation or therapeutic touch or sand play therapy.

I feel another proposal to the FAA coming on.

Dr. Terry Riley is a psychologist and travel security authority. His column appears on Wednesdays. He is author of the popular book Travel Can Be Murder. Visit his site at http://www.appliedpsychology.com or e-mail him at terry@ticked.com.