TO GO OR NOT TO GO

Posted on 11/16/2015 | About France

Even as airlines operated a normal schedule of flights into and out of Paris on Saturday, travellers with future plans to visit the French capital reconsidered their options after a series of terror attacks. Some quickly cancelled their tickets, a worrisome sign for the travel and tourism industries.

Joe Nardozzi, a 31-year-old New York investment banker, and his wife won't be taking the wedding-anniversary trip they planned later this month. “I have no interest in losing my life over a trip to Paris,” he said. Travel agents said some clients called to cancel trips, and one advocacy group for business travellers predicted that corporations would let frightened employees do the same.

Decisions by companies and leisure travellers could hinge on whether the Paris attacks are seen as a one-time event or the vanguard of a stepped-up campaign by Islamic radicals. Islamic State, the group fighting in Syria and Iraq, also claimed last month that it bombed a Russian passenger jet over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, although investigators have not determined the cause of the crash that killed 224 people. High tensions after the attacks could be seen at airports across Europe on Saturday.

A Paris-bound Air France jet was evacuated at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport after authorities received a threatening tweet. A terminal at London's Gatwick Airport was shut down for hours after a man was seen throwing away what looked like a gun. Paris airport authority Aeroports de Paris said all flights were operating normally Sunday, but that travellers should give themselves more time because of heightened security measures. Air France said it would operate all upcoming flights to and from France but that delays were expected because of increased security at airports, including Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport.

US authorities said that they had nothing to add to Friday's comment by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson that officials didn't know of any specific or credible terror threats against the United States. United Airlines and Delta Air Lines said that all their flights between the US and Paris operated on Saturday. American Airlines said all its flights would run - except a Paris-to-Dallas flight - that plane remained in Dallas when the Paris-bound leg was cancelled Friday night. Delta spokesman Anthony Black said flights to and from Paris were full.

Still, some Americans cancelled upcoming trips after seeing coverage of the terror on Paris streets. Blake Fleetwood, president of New York-based Cook Travel, said about 10 customers out of the roughly 30 with trips booked to Paris told him they want to cancel. He and his wife might do the same next month. “It's a terrible situation,” Fleetwood said. “It's going to hurt the travel industry, the hotels, the airlines, the restaurants.''

Tourism to the French capital already took a big hit earlier this year from the attacks in January that killed 17 journalists, police and shoppers at a kosher grocery. The Paris tourist office said the number of hotel stays fell 3.3 percent in the first three months of the year, a drop it blamed specifically on the January attacks. The situation had just begun to improve, with summer visits by US travellers, who are Paris' biggest group of foreign visitors rising significantly. The new attacks targeted neighbourhoods in Paris' trendy east side, which Paris tourist officials had specifically mentioned in a recent update on tourism in the capital. It's not just Western visitors who might avoid Paris after the attacks. Egyptian college graduate Aya Sayed has always dreamed of strolling the streets of the City of Light. “I would be too afraid to go because I don't want to be mistreated because of my headscarf or ethnicity,” she said. “Who knows what they might do to us now?'' Consumers with travel insurance that includes terrorism coverage can probably recover the cost of a trip to Paris, according to Squaremouth, a policy-comparison website. But even policies that cover terrorism may only apply to trips scheduled in the next week or month and might not apply to travel in other parts of France or Europe more broadly, a company spokeswoman said. Even travellers who go to Paris are likely to be in a less celebratory mood. On Saturday, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and other must-see attractions were closed until further notice, and the mood in the city was changed. Toronto residents Mark Hutchison and Ashleigh Marshall planned a big night out during a Paris stopover on their trip back home from Tanzania - “go to a restaurant, go to a bar, have a glass of wine,” Hutchison said. Instead, they decided to hunker down in their hotel with a bottle of wine once the sun went down Saturday evening. “It's a lot to take in,” he said of the deadly attacks. “You can't make sense of it.'' On flights to the US from Paris, the mood was understandably subdued. Shannon Sharpe, 47, who works for an oil and gas company, caught a connecting flight in Paris on his way to Houston from Africa. “It was a bit more quiet,” he said of the Air France flight. “I don't want to say it was a bit of mourning, but when a tragedy like that happens, people are still in a state of shock,” he said.