Are Planes Flying Lower Over Downtown? By Carl Glassman Residents of Lower Manhattan have a fear of flying, but it has nothing to do with leaving the ground. Nearly nine months after the attack on the World Trade Center, many people living near the site say they continue to be startled by the sight and sound of commercial airliners. And they report feeling especially menaced by planes that they believe are flying closer overhead than before Sept. 11.   "My whole gut clenches and I feel a moment of intense fear," said Carole Ashley, describing her response to loud or high pitched jet engines. Ashley, who was in her Beach Street apartment when she heard the unforgettable roar of the first hijacked plane, says she knows her imagination may be playing tricks, but she feels that airliners now are coming "too directly" over the city. Other residents insist that what they are seeing is all too real. "It’s not a perception, it’s a fact. They are definitely flying lower and closer to the site," said a Battery Park City man who did not want to be identified. "There’s a 1,800-foot mountain missing that they don’t have to avoid." "Maybe it’s some unofficial thing that it’s okay to fly low," added his wife, who was in front of the Winter Garden when the first plane hit. The Federal Aviation Administration says there has been no change in the way commercial air traffic comes in and out of the New York area. "The route structure has existed for many years and has stayed the same," said Jim Peters, an FAA spokesman. "The absence of the World Trade Center doesn’t affect the network of flight tracks in and out of New York." Even if flights are unaltered, said Tribeca resident Robert Linzey, some accommodation should be made. "Let’s lift these planes up a thousand feet," he said. "It’s such a simple thing." Raphael Campeas, Ph.D., a research psychologist at New York Psychiatric Institute who studies post-traumatic stress disorder, said it "makes sense" that the perception of flight patterns could be affected. "Many people traumatized by what happened do perceive things as much more dangerous than they used to," Campeas said. "A lot has to do with the stimuli experienced at the time." A single symptom such as hypersensitivity to airplanes, he added, is a sign of trauma but does not constitute PTSD. Carole Ashley, for one, does not see her symptom subsiding any time soon. "It will just take a lot more time," she said, "before we stop thinking about airplanes."