Robert T. Francis of the NTSB addresses the media at a news conference. (AP Photo)

Many airline passengers admitted they were apprehensive Thursday, but few seemed willing to change their travel plans in the wake of the TWA crash or other recent incidents.

"I'm nervous, but what do you do eight hours before you're scheduled to leave?" asked Debbie Virag of Woodbridge, N.J., a vacationer arriving at Kennedy Airport for a flight to the Dominican Republic.

Travel agents in the metropolitan area and across the country said customers continued to book flights. "Nobody's called or canceled or anything like that. They're just booking tickets," said Kathy Matheis at Sayville Travel Agency Inc.

"We have not seen any changes in travel plans," said Betsy Day, a spokeswoman for Minneapolis-based Carlson Wagonlit Travel, one of the nation's largest agencies.

But industry experts and some agents said the stick-with-it plans could change, depending on the outcome of the TWA investigation. They noted that the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 reduced passenger loads for six months -- and "not just on Pan Am," said Lee Howard, an airline consultant.

Experts said the TWA crash, taken together with other recent incidents such as the ValuJet crash near Miami in May and the deaths earlier this month of two Delta passengers in a bizarre accident in Pensacola, Fla., could scare off some leisure travelers.

But the ValuJet accident alone, even with the questions it raised about safety on cut-rate carriers, didn't appear to have much impact. Airline load factors -- the percentage of available seats actually sold -- reached an all-time high of 79.5 percent in June.

One reason may be that many leisure travelers tend to use prepaid tickets that are nonrefundable. "By mid to late July, an awful lot of people have prepaid their arrangements, made their plans and have a lot of money and emotional capital invested in their trips," said Ed Perkins, editor of Consumer Reports Travel Newsletter.

That appeared to be the case Thursday at TWA's international terminal at Kennedy, where passengers waited to board flights. Several said their travel plans had been made months ago. "The likelihood of it happening twice in a row is very slim," said Richard Warner, of New Jersey.

While travelers might not be changing their plans, many were asking travel agents more questions about the safety of the airlines and the aircraft on which they are flying, said Melissa Abernathy, a spokeswoman for American Express Travel Related Services.

And there were a few who were truly spooked. Mark Arkind, a Hicksville computer consultant, had planned to vacation in Europe next month but was thinking about other destinations.

"I'm not going to fly," he said. "There have been too many air mishaps."

Staff writers Andrew Friedman and Tom Incantalupo contributed to this story.