Friendly skies?

If you're like most people, air travel comes with a twinge of the jitters, if not more. Anyone who denies the latent fear of flying need only look at the 24/7 coverage of the Feb. 12 crash of Continental Express Flight 3407. The endless speculation about the crash's possible causes, about the flight's final moments and the relentless media coverage panders to our worst fears.

Hardly mentioned was that the 49 people aboard who perished near Buffalo represented the first U.S. commercial airline fatality in 2 years -- including all domestic and international flights. More than 100,000 people typically die in automobile accidents over that stretch of time -- more than 120 each day.

That is the psychology of air travel. All the admonishments about the risks one faces when getting behind the wheel of a car will never equal the dreadful feeling that can arise from putting oneås life in the hands of mechanics, air traffic controllers and a crew you've never met.

Itås not just the media that plays to our fears of air travel; Congress does it, too. In so doing, it required, over Bush administration objections, that all cargo moving on passenger flights be screened by August 2010. From a practical standpoint, the rule was probably unnecessary; the air cargo industry polices itself, knowing that the day a shipment detonates is the day the industry is shut out of passenger capacity forever. The Transportation Security Administration swears by its canines, and it may be true that man's best friend would do the job. But for the public, which abandoned air travel in droves after 9/11, and not just because of the recession, that was never going to be enough.

Not that it will make a public already rattled by the economy rest any easier, but it does appear that the 100 percent screening mandate will be achieved by the deadline, if not before. The 2007 Implementing the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act, which included the 100 percent mandate, also required that half of all air cargo packages be screened by Feb. 1 of this year. That deadline was easily met by airlines' own screening efforts thanks to a requirement that all cargo moving on narrowbody aircraft had to be screened as of last October. Now the push is on to get to 100 percent, which will apply to all flights originating in the U.S.