[jimworcs]

The truth is that communication is the key to nearly all jobs which involve public interaction. Ground staff have a particularly difficult job, because normally customer service agents work one to one with a customer, so even if one is very irate they have the chance at least to communicate what they need to say. Ground staff at airports are often dealing with hundreds of angry passengers all at the same time, and they can develop an almost mob mentality. However, this is greatly compounded by the habitual focus of airlines on reducing their costs regardless of the cost to their customers. For example, consolidating flights to get a schedule back on track, even if that might strand dozens of passengers for days at a time. When they do this, they are often highly dishonest about why such decisions were made and they often lie to their passengers. They are only able to do this because they essentially operate as monopolies, but they have a fig leaf of competition. They have driven standards down collectively so low, there is little to distinguish the majors from each other. In truth, some are worse than others, but few have a distinct culture (Southwest is probably an honourable exception in the US for example). Therefore, passengers cannot exercise the normal market constraints on the airlines. This is why I advocate stronger regulation. I do not, by the way, advocate Federal Government intervention, other than in regulating the industry more effectively. I also would argue that they should open the market to foreign owned companies, just as many markets other markets are open to them.