Sep. 17--With air safety in doubt after last week's lethal hijackings, Orlando-area tourism leaders are calling on the state to free up all or part of a $2 million contingency fund for advertising to urge people to come by car instead. 

"You market when you're in trouble," said state Rep. Randy Johnson, R-Celebration, who organized a meeting in Orlando last week of hotel and theme park executives and state officials to talk about the fallout from the terrorist attacks. 

The Commission on Tourism and Visit Florida, the state's tourism marketing arm, will discuss whether to use money from the emergency advertising fund at its regular quarterly meeting Thursday on Amelia Island. 

Officials last dipped into the fund in summer 1998, after industry leaders complained that media coverage of the state's wildfires created the impression the entire state was in flames. The money was used to advertise in The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. 

James Murphy, chairman of the Osceola County Tourist Development Council, said marketing to motorists seems the best way to buoy the industry during the coming weeks and months. 

Orlando marketing firm Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown surveyed 800 people nationwide shortly after the terrorist strikes and found that about 55 percent of business travelers plan to drive rather than fly to out-of-town meetings whenever possible; 38 percent plan to cancel trips altogether. 

Leisure travelers are more frightened -- about two-thirds said they'll avoid flying, while more than a third said they expect to call off trips already scheduled. The margin of error was 3 percentage points. 

Murphy said planes may be grounded and people may be afraid to fly, but "they are going to drive." 

Central Florida's tourist economy, already in a slump because of the weak U.S. economy, could decline further if frightened travelers refuse to fly. Forty-five percent of Central Florida's visitors come by plane. 

Visit Florida spokesman Tom Flanigan said officials hope the downturn will be "very temporary and limited in scope." 

But at last week's meeting in Orlando, the president and chief executive of Visit Florida said it's hard to predict how long the decline in travel may last. 

"None of us has a crystal ball," he said. "We're really in uncharted waters." 

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(c) 2001. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.