IN THE CLOSING DAYS of last year, there was the unexpected event of the American Airlines passenger plane ending a flight between Miami and Kingston, belly-down in the sand across the road from the Norman Manley airport runway.

It wasn’t the first aviation accident at the airport which originally carried the name of the Palisadoes, the sandy strip of land along which it is situated. The records show that on April 10, 1953, a plane crash there took 13 lives – five men, five women and three children. Mercifully, we have never had to experience anything like that since.

This time, we were granted a miracle. No lives were lost and, according to reports, injuries appear to be minimal. The psychological effects on those who were involved is not known, but an expert in human behaviour says it is more than likely there will be some passengers who will have to deal with recurring memories of the landing. Not everyone will be so challenged. The expert says that some will continue to step on and off an aircraft with the same ease that they would take a journey by road.

For the second time in just over a fortnight, another air travel incident occurred and we are left to consider the consequence. We all know now of the bizarre behaviour of a Nigerian-born youth who tried to ignite a device which, had it gone off, would have claimed over 300 lives, himself a martyr among them. Mercifully, he was stopped in his tracks, but the implication of what could have happened has triggered an escalation of the security checks which are already an inconvenience to international travellers.

We already suffer the humiliation of being divested of footwear and items of clothing at airports around the world, thanks to another young zealot who has gone down in history as “the Shoe Bomber”. Remember him? He tried to detonate a bomb in his shoe in the midst of a trans-Atlantic flight. Fortunately, he also was stopped, but from then on the world had to take more seriously the threat of terrorism. This has changed the way we travel… the indignity of public undressing, the intrusion into our personal space and so on.

ONE CRITICAL CHANGE this time around is that the days of nuff-nuff hand luggage are numbered… and you know how we love our hand luggage. Soon we will only be able to reminisce on the gentler times when we stuffed into the overhead bins and under the seats of the plane, the comforts of home – the white rum, the Christmas cake, the Easter bun, the roas’ breadfruit, the ‘scoveitch fish, the jerk pork and all that good stuff, eagerly awaited by friends and family at the other end. On the way back home, we filled up on bargains from the mall (as if we didn’t have any here). The times they are a-changing.

The new, stringent regulations now being put in force at every airport, are not to be fooled with. Don’t think you can argue your way out of compliance. The security personnel mean what they say. Repeat after me: one piece of hand luggage is not the same as two grips united by duct tape. So prepare to get with the programme which means coping with the long lines, getting to the airport even earlier than before, and preparing to endure intrusion into our private business. And for Heaven’s sake, don’t attempt to make jokes about it with the Immigration and Customs Officers. They’re not smiling. The days of smiley welcome are over.

There’s another way in which the new security measures could affect us. This year, we’re banking everything on tourism to be the main plank of our economic survival. There are high expectations of a good season but we cannot overlook the unexpected. We have to hope that the new, time-consuming security measures will not deter vacationers who may feel safer by staying home, away from the time-consuming searches and possibilities of terrorist actions.

SO, SOME CHANGES ARE COMING. Some of our worst traits will have to be adjusted in the process. Notice how we “have chest” as the saying goes, for our own in positions of authority. Ask Air Jamaica staff and they will tell you what they have to put up with when they seek to enforce regulations. For instance, we believe that nothing is wrong with overweight baggage and we’re not afraid to tell “the gyal” fe back off, because “wi pay wi money”. Duppy know who fe frighten. We have “plenty mout” on Air Jamaica but put us on one of the foreign airlines and see how soon we shut up, going as quiet as a muss-muss. (Apparently, anything foreign is better than us.) There’s a lot which will have to learn and unlearn very fast now, especially as the day draws near when we may no longer have an airline to call our own.

The Kingston air crash made the international news. I don’t know if it is good or bad publicity but as usual, nothing is what it seems. Many persons – myself included – held our breath when the news broke of the regrettable occurrence. The first question was “which airline”? Call us paranoid, but we know full well that if it had been Air Jamaica, the country’s reputation would have been eroded even further.

Not many are prepared to recognise that we have skilled professionals here, including some of the finest pilots to be found anywhere. The same evening of the American Airlines incident, Jamaican pilots landed safely on the same tarmac in the same rain-soaked conditions which seemed to have challenged the AA pilots. We’re not saying our people are invincible, but their knowledge of the area and their noted skills very likely gave them an advantage, but one would assume all professionals have the same skills.

We await word as to whether it is a fact that the AA cockpit crew really did not heed the word of our control tower to fly over and re-enter the runway space as it has been said. If it is indeed so, an explanation is needed. Did the AA pilots think our control tower team did not know what they were talking about? So – we haven’t heard the end of the story… and now, lawyers are swarming like bees, from near and far. Litigation season is now open. Soon we’ll know the meaning of the phrase “ambulance chasers”.

OLD YEAR – NEW YEAR: We have to agree that some real foul-ups, bleeps and blunders were made in Oh-Nine. It will not be possible to bury all of them, so can we just press on, learning from the mistakes and avoiding repetition, if possible? As to the future, the consensus on the street is that this year it is going to be “hard to rahtid”. We’ve survived bad times before. We will have to do it again.

THE BEST – the many really decent Jamaicans you can still meet in the street, shop, market – etc. Most of them are struggling to make ends meet. Despite the battering, when treated with respect, they respond with graciousness which some of us do not expect from “people like that”. We’re far better than we think. Learn that.

THE WORST – people who share their bedroom life with strangers via the internet. To think we even have a young Jamaican woman whose X-rated interaction with her lover has been included in the promotion of her so-called music career. Nasty.

HAVE A MANAGEABLE NEW YEAR.

gloudonb@yahoo.com