LESLEY Young, spokesperson for Yorkshire Tourist Board headquarters in York said: "We only hope that our British Tourist Authority headquarters in New York is all right. They are based on the fifth floor of a building in Fifth Avenue. Obviously, should flights out of New York be stopped for a while then it will affect visitor figures to the county."

A suggestion that one of the aircraft had taken off from Boston prompted a flurry of calls between the head office of Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency, and its Boston office.

Keith Crane, Yorkshire Forward spokesman, said: "We had to double-check that none of our people had boarded any of the hijacked flights."

An urgent message of assurance was e-mailed from Chicago in the immediate wake of the crisis by Bill Davis, chairman of the U.S.-based print firm RR Donnelley to its huge operation at Flaxby Moor near York. He told Keith Ruddock, Donnelley's continuous improvement manager at Flaxby Moor, that while there were no Donnelley's offices in the World Trade Centre, he was seeking information about whether the firm's employees in other offices there were unharmed.

Updated: 12:01 Wednesday, September 12, 2001