A Letter From the Publisher

By Richard B. Thomas

TIME's beat is the entire world, and it naturally follows that our correspondents are among the airlines' steadiest customers. In view of this week's cover story on air safety, it is noteworthy that few of these reporters, many of whom log tens of thousands of miles each year, express fears for their own safety while aboard an aircraft.

Chicago Correspondent Lee Griggs, whose reporting figures heavily in this week's cover, calculates that he has flown at least a million miles for TIME during the past 30 years. He has had more than his share of near misses: two flights from which he had deplaned, one in Hong Kong and another on Cape Cod, crashed at the next stop, with fatal results. On a third occasion he was the sixth standby for a flight from Tampa to Atlanta, but only four people ahead of him were taken. Shortly after, the plane crashed at Jacksonville, killing all aboard. Says Griggs: "I missed getting to a late-breaking story, but I'm still around to tell about it."

Miami Bureau Chief Marcia Gauger, formerly based in South Asia, recalls that she found it unsettling to fly on Pakistan International Airlines because as a flight approached its destination, a stewardess would customarily announce, "In ten minutes, inshallah ((God willing)), we will be landing." Says Gauger gratefully: "Allah never failed us."

Several members of our staff have devised criteria for judging how nervous they ought to be. Among them are Washington Correspondent Patricia Delaney and Jerry Hannifin, who both contributed to the cover. "My first rule for comfort and safety is to fly when the smallest number of people do," says Delaney. "I'd rather get up at 5 a.m. on a weekend, when the capital is most romantic in the dawn blush along the Potomac, than face the mobbed 8 a.m. weekday flights." Hannifin, a longtime pilot who has covered the aviation industry for TIME for more than three decades, maintains he is "relaxed and happy aboard any professionally flown aircraft." He nonetheless recommends sitting on the aisle in the plane's midsection. Why? "You have a choice of over-wing emergency exits." New York Correspondent Joseph Boyce, only half facetiously, checks out the pilot. "It's always good if he's graying," says Boyce. "That means he is 'experienced.' But if he is completely gray and, heaven forbid, wears glasses, I begin to get uneasy." Clearly, for TIME's frequent flyers, humor helps keep worries about air safety in proper perspective.