I remember the days when flying was fun; an adventure, and it wasn’t that long ago. The flight attendants were friendly, the other travelers seemed to be happy to be going someplace, rather than grimly trying to endure a miserable experience. But boy-howdy, how that has changed.

This trip (to New Orleans, by the way!) really brought home to me how much attitudes have changed. (Except for a three year old traveling with her mom across the aisle from me. She was giggling and going “Whee!” and kicking her legs like a little kid on a carnival ride. It made everyone in the area around her smile.) The flight attendants were close to surly, and well not exactly rude, they certainly didn’t go out of their way to make anyone feel welcome. In fact, prison guards are more pleasant. (I’ve given workshops at a woman’s penitentiary, so I know first hand.)

Is it that hard to smile? To say please and thank you? To at least pretend that you are happy to have people flying on your airline? After all, if we didn’t, you’d be out of a job.

To my way of thinking, as the airlines struggle to come up with ways to decrease costs (which means decreasing services), it’s more important than ever to have flight attendants step up their friendliness in order to make travel less of an ordeal. Attitude is everything, and it’s contagious. Flight attendants have a fabulous opportunity to influence a whole plane-load of people for better or for worse. I’ve seen it happen both ways. And it makes me wonder why more of them don’t step up to that challenge, and try to make what has become a trying experience as pleasant as possible.

For that matter, we all have the opportunity to influence the attitudes and moods of others every day. How can we all step up to the challenge and make our influence a postive one?