I fly a great deal, and like many other people, I have come to hate it. I have been flying, as part of my career and life, for about 30 years, and that I feel as I do about such an integral part of my routine is not good.

So I have been thinking about why that is. I have tried to be rational about it, too. I understand that since 9/11 there is much more security, and with that comes bureaucracy; that is not the genesis of my frustration per se. I have even been open-minded to the economic reality of the airline industry and understood that making profits underlies anything else a business must do. But in the end, what I feel—and believe to be unforgivable about the airline industry—is that it is an industry that blames its customers for its ills.

There is a difference between service and servitude. Service is a gift cycle between giver and receiver, allowing the exchange and reissue of promise and delivery. I give you good service, and you receive it and give thanks for it; it is a partnership because we have both a tacit and express agreement around expectation of roles, and an acceptance of our mutual responsibilities. Good service deserves and receives gratitude and loyalty. It is a structure of trust. On the other hand, servitude is akin to a fixed morality where the giver of service is subservient to the receiver. Think Upstairs, Downstairs.

The airline industry has forgotten this. For them, it seems, the customer is not an integral part of their current model. We are not the center of their world; we are an objective, not a purpose. It has become a mercenary industry. They know we have to use them, and so they can decide how we use them. In this way, unilateral decisions can be made that can affect us as customers, but around which we can have little comment and no riposte.

I was flying last week, and had an example of all this. The flight was late. The plane was delayed coming from its previous destination. No problem about this. It happens. In the terminal, we were informed about it at the beginning, and then there was silence. At the gate, the staff disappeared, leaving people wondering what was going to happen next. An hour went by and beyond the time we had been informed would cover the delay. Staff finally appeared and announced, magically, that the plane had landed and was at another gate, and we should move smartly as it was already boarding. We jogged over and boarded. It was a Friday afternoon and the flight was completely full, so I was pleased for the financial ROI for the airline on our flight. But the plane didn’t move. Thirty minutes after we were supposed to leave, we were told there was "a small problem with the computer," so they were calling avionics. One hour later, we were simply told the problem was not solved. Two hours later, we were told that they were going to reboot the computer and see what would happen. That did the trick, and off we went. No one apologized; no one said they understood that this would mean hardship for connecting passengers; no one took responsibility for what had happened.

I was sitting next to a man who was connecting to a flight for New Zealand. He kept asking a flight attendant if he was going to be okay. They said they would find out. Thirty minutes before landing, they announced that he would miss his connection, but they offered no solution. He was visibly upset, and the flight attendants disappeared in front of him. We landed and nothing was said or done to improve his situation.

The airline industry is not truly conscious of what it is doing to itself. It cannot be, for if it were, it would have grounded its solutions to its customers needs, for they are the source of brand longevity. Rather, it is focused on its problems as being unrelated to its customers, and related to a false ideal about how if they can be profitable, then the customers will be taken care of.

We will walk a long way to find good service and call that value. We will search for kindness and compassion and call that quality. In this way, the airline industry has lost its moral center and meaning. For an industry that flies people home to their personal places of meaning, losing their own sense of where home is speaks to how off-kilter we can all become as we search for what is meaningful, and how as growers and nomads we should keep our definition of home central to the purpose of our journeys. The airlines can advertise their understanding of the subject of coming home, but they have never been as far away from their consciousness around it as they are now.

[Main Image: iphotostock.com]