Fear Of Flying

It used to be you could get knocked down by a bus. Now you can be killed by a private plane. The deaths of John Kennedy Junior and the two Bessette sisters are very much a story of ordinary American working life. They died at the end of a hard week s work in Manhattan. Had they chosen to leave the office early John and Carolyn were, after all, en route to a wedding next day, and Lauren Bessette was off for a weekend in the country they would not have crash-landed in the dark.
Compared to what is still the Irish way of working life, the American way is back-breaking. Saturday weddings here, if they re taking place at the far end of the country, merit an early finish to the Friday in Dublin. We d be in the train at Heuston, the first drinks poured, by five in the afternoon. Same for a weekend in the West. Lauren Bessette, an international banker, was still in her office, working away. She didn t arrive into John s office, for a lift to the airport, until six-thirty. By then, the rush hour was under way, traffic was crawling, they wouldn t reach the airport till eight, wouldn t take off until after eight-thirty, wouldn t arrive if they were going to arrive at Martha s Vineyard until ten at night. After which, Lauren still had to travel to her house. Dinner around eleven, if she was lucky and the Kennedy s would only be settling into the family home at Hyannisport around then. In American parlance, these people were three ordinary working stiffs, though they earned millions of dollars.
Is that way of life coming our way? I had the unwanted thrill, once, of flying by private plane from Dublin to Waterford. We never got there because of mist. Look out and see if you can spot the coastline, the pilot requested casually as we flew through soup. He meant it. We could have been heading out over the Atlantic towards New York, for all he knew. When the sky finally cleared, the plane was forced to make a landing at a closed airport inland. After refuelling, we returned to Dublin. Look out and see if you can spot Ballymun Towers, the pilot requested. He meant it.
We weren t allowed to smoke on board for safety reasons. If this was the jet-set life (and it was), they could shove it, I announced pompously, as I was dropped back home at 8pm on a Friday night in Dublin. Had we gone by train, we d have been three sheets to the wind by then in Waterford, on fine wine and oysters.
That way of life is here now in no small measure. But it is not yet sufficiently common that death by private plane is considered run of the mill. Each crash is regarded as something out of Hollywood, the kind of thing that doesn t happen to ordinary mortals. The Irish die accidentally in car crashes, or when they re hit by a bus but a plane crashing into the sea? So rare as to be unthinkable.
So unthinkably rare, in fact, that there are objections when members of the Government use the Government jet to fly around the country. It s all right , just about, for them to use the yoke to get to Brussels but a trip to Tralee? Get on yer bike, people used shout at Dick Spring, who pleaded a bad back in mitigation of his cheeky flights from one end of the country to the other. Nobody suggested he cut short his working week in Dublin and take the train. He was treated like . . . a Yank. He was not . . . one of us.
Are we soon to become like them, working long weeks, taking short quick breaks, rushing around in search of rest,fg into the sun, too high, too far, too soon? All of this has been said before, of course: at the beginning of the century, when that damned contraption, the car, replaced that damned contraption, the horse and carriage, which replaced that damned contraption, shank s mare, which didn t go fast or far enough, confining people to the home place, safe but in metaphorical chains.
Still, had those young Americans left work just one hour early, one lousy hour . . . n