The AOL Travel Team

Kris -- AOL Travel Editor

Last week's events brought back the scary images of 9/11 and the fact that the safety we take for granted can easily be breached.

Two of my neighbors are flight attendants and I ran into one the other morning when I was walking my dog. She was in her uniform getting into her car to start a shift. We chatted and acknowledged that she had a very tough job made even tougher by the events in Britain on August 10th.

She said that the attendants and pilots were used to these events and traveling but it was very hard on travelers, many of whom had no idea what had unfolded that morning. She said people were scared and confused and had to abandon many items without notice. Her advice was to "check everything" no matter what. That it would cause much less trauma for you to be without your toothpaste, perfume and water on the plane. That the chance of losing your luggage was much less trouble than the trouble it could cause to have to scan and dump these items later.

I also spoke to a friend of mine who's a busy executive who travels a lot. He was flying from San Francisco to New York on August 10 and luckily had heard the news before he went to the airport. My friend rarely checks his bags in order to speed up his frequent passages through the airport. Rather than risk causing a delay of having his items thrown out, he had the foresight to FedEx them home. (This is a trick that our own contributing editor Peter Greenberg has mentioned in past videos.) While an extra expense, it far outweighs the potential time wasted and money replacing those items.

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