International Arab Terrorism Cramping People's Style

Photo by Batya Medad

About a year ago, we heard that there would be a family wedding in New York late this year. Everybody kept telling us that to save money we must get our tickets early. That was the popular wisdom of old. There's such a limited amount of airplane tickets that as the date gets closer, especially if it's around a big holiday, prices will skyrocket. Well, for various reasons, I was wary of planning too far in advance.

Photo by Batya Medad

The past few years I've been buying my ticket to visit my father in Arizona just a couple of weeks before traveling. I've always gotten reasonably priced tickets for the times I needed to fly. But I knew that I was risking it this time. New York City on New Year's Eve is a biggie, so how many tickets could possibly be left less than two months in advance when the smart people made their plans many  months in earlier? And since supply and demand can raise the price, how much more would I be paying than the rest of the family?

It seems like prices have not climbed the way people had predicted. There is an easy to guess reason for that. It's the terrorism, more exact Arab Muslim terrorism. No matter what excuse/rationale/issue etc the terrorists use to "excuse" the murder and mayhem, fewer and fewer people feel comfortable and confident flying and traveling.  Paris suspect eludes Belgian dragnet, Brussels still in lockdown  (Reuters) Many people feel safest close to home. Midair airplane explosions are even more frightening and off-putting than the previous generation's airplane hijacking.

Even out of the way luxury hotels, like the one recently attacked in Mali, are not havens.

On Friday, gunmen stormed the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali's capital, Bamako, taking hostage 170 people, many of them foreign nationals. photo credit

Many friends who usually travel abroad frequently are now limiting their travel and trying to get their family members to do the same.

I have no doubt that financially I benefited from the fear, chaos and terrorism. Gd willing my family and I will fly safely and peacefully to our destinations and back home again.