Incidentally, the one point on which I agree with Vernon is that our safety record is exceedingly good already."
He went on: Because of this inherent fear, many passengers felt more comfortable, more reassured, with air trip insurance. They wanted it. They also wanted it to be obtainable at airports, a fact proven by the enormous volume of sales from vending machines and airport insurance booths. It was a matter of freedom that passengers should have the right, and the opportunity, to buy insurance or not. As for getting the insurance ahead of time, the plain fact was that most people didn't think of it. Besides, Mel added, if flight insurance were sold this way, a great deal of revenue to airports---including Lincoln International---would be lost. At the mention of airport revenue, Mel smiled. The airport commissioners smiled with him.
That was the crux of it, of course, Mel realized. Revenue from the insurance concessions was too important to lose. At Lincoln International, the airport gained half a million dollars annually from commissions on insurance sales, though few purchasers realized that the airport appropriated twenty-five cents from every premium dollar. Yet insurance represented the fourth largest concession, with only parking, restaurants, and auto rentals producing larger sums for the airport's coffers. At other big airports, insurance revenue was similar or higher. It was all very well, Mel reflected, for Vernon Demerest to talk about "greedy airport managements," but that kind of money had a way of talking, too.
Mel decided not to put his thoughts into speech. His single brief reference to revenue was enough. The commissioners, who were familiar with the airport's financial affairs, would get the point.
He consulted his notes. They were notes which one of the insurance companies doing business at Lincoln International had supplied him with yesterday. Mel had not asked for the notes, nor had he mentioned to anyone outside his own office that today's insurance debate was coming up. But the insurance people had somehow learned, and it was extraordinary how they always did---then acted promptly to protect their interests.
Mel would not have used the notes if they had run counter to his own honestly held opinions. Fortunately, they did not.
"Now," Mel said, "about sabotage---potential and otherwise." He was aware of the board members listening intently.
"Vernon has talked quite a lot about that---but I must say, having listened carefully, that most of his remarks seemed to me to be overstatements. Actually, the proven incidents of air disasters because of insurance-inspired bombings have been very few."
In the spectator section, Captain Demerest shot to his feet. "Great God!---how many disasters do we need to have?"
The chairman rapped sharply with his gavel. "Captain... if you please!"
Mel waited until Demerest subsided, then continued calmly, "Since the question has been asked, the answer is 'none.' A more pertinent question is: Might not the disasters still have occurred, even if airport-purchased insurance had not been available?"
Mel paused, to let his point sink home, before continuing.
"It can be argued, of course, that if airport insurance had not been available, the disasters we are talking about might never have happened at all. In other words, these were crimes of impulse, triggered by the ease with which airport insurance can be bought. Similarly, it can be contended that even if the crimes were contemplated in advance, they might not have been carried through had flight insurance been less readily available. Those, I think, are Vernon's arguments---and the ALPA's."
Mel glanced briefly at his brother-in-law who gave no sign beyond a scowl.
"The glaring weakness of all those arguments," Mel maintained, "is that they are purely suppositional. It seems to me just as likely that someone planning such a crime would not be deterred by the absence of airport insurance, but would merely obtain their insurance elsewhere, which---as Vernon himself pointed out---is a simple thing to do."
Expressed another way, Mel pointed out, flight insurance appeared only a secondary motive of would-be saboteurs, and not a prime reason for their crime. The real motives, when aerial sabotage occurred, were based on age-old human weaknesses--love triangles, greed, business failures, suicide.
As long as there had been human beings, Mel argued, it had proven impossible to eliminate these motives. Therefore, those concerned with aviation safety and sabotage prevention should seek, not to abolish airport flight insurance, but to strengthen other precautionary measures in the air and on the ground. One such measure was stricter control of the sale of dynamite---the principal tool used by most aerial saboteurs to date. Another proposal was development