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The disappearance of MH370 has tested our collective resolve.

Air travel survived decades of terrorism, including attacks which resulted in the deaths of everyone on the plane. It survived 9/11. It'll survive the next successful attack. The only real worry is that we'll scare ourselves into making air travel so onerous that we won't fly anymore.

Death by plane crash scares me. I travel a lot, and when you hit turbulence, and post 9/11, that's in the back of my mind a bit.

I'm not sure if I could bear to go on an aeroplane again. It's not my concern for the welfare of the planet. It's not even the long check-in times and queuing. No, it's the humiliation of the security process that has finally done it for me.

The men and women who make up a plane's crew put their lives in jeopardy each time they fly. It's our job as much as anyone's to make sure we make it as safe as possible up there for them.

My wife had taken off on a plane. Two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center. I, of course, like any other person, felt potentially devastated, panicky a little bit.

It is extraordinary how safe flying has become. You are now statistically more likely to be elected president of the United States in your lifetime than you are to die in a plane crash. What an amazing achievement as a society! But what we end up focusing on are the catastrophic failures that are incredibly rare but happen every now and then.

Of course I was delighted the flight was over, but I still had to worry about cleaning up inside the cabin, I had to worry about the hatch, how to get in the sling, and so on.

One October day in 1976, a Cuban airliner exploded over the Caribbean and crashed, killing all 73 people aboard. There should have been 74. I had a ticket on that flight, but changed my reservation at the last moment and flew to Havana on an earlier plane.