I once saw a quote attributed to Mark Twain (inaccurately, I believe) that went something like this: “Publishers are like the weather. They exist so that people can have something about which to agree to complain.” If publishers ever served that purpose, surely they have been replaced by airlines. They are the universal subject of conversation, more inclusive than sports or movies, less likely to ruin friendships than politics, and less likely to interest HR than sex. Plus, we all have horror stories.

In this respect, April has been the cruelest month. Well, March and April, since Southwest started grounding flights (botched inspections) March 12, British Airways opened (if that is the word) Terminal 5 at Heathrow March 27 (lost luggage, lost staff), and American cancelled its workhorse MD-80 flights for several days starting April 8 (botched inspections). All in all, a great month for Amtrak.

Lord knows I fly enough to know that there’s inherent stochastic hurly-burly (b-school speak for “shit happens”) in air travel. But I never cease to be amazed by the airlines’ surreal attitude toward customer service. On American Airlines’s home page on April 11, the high-water-mark of chaos, the “advisory” at the top connected to a perfectly fine apology; and a day or two later, as normality returned, frequent flyers such as I got an apologetic e-mail. But when the front page of every newspaper in the U.S. shows your passengers stranded and pitiable, surely “FAA Inspections [i.e., not our fault] affect [totally halt] some [as much as 40%] AA travel” is a sentence that should go down in the annals of understatement. And surely the apology should have been on the landing page, not a click in.

British Airways did better, a little. Go there and a pop-up apology greets you. Currently it reads “Since opening London Heathrow's Terminal 5 on March 27, 2008, we have experienced some operational difficulties and we accept that we have not provided the level of service our customers expect.” It was more (and more appropriately) groveling earlier. Click past the “oops,” though, and you’re in an Orwellian opium dream: “At London Heathrow Terminal 5 we’ve created a natural, logical journey that’s so calm, you’ll flow through. It shouldn’t take long to get from Check-in to Departures. Transferring and arriving are just as simple and calm. Spend the time you save enjoying the excellent range of shops, cafes and restaurants. Or simply relax and be wowed by the world class architecture.” You’ll be so tranked out you’ll forget to worry about your bags.

As I said, I get it that things go wrong. Badly wrong. All the time. I get it that security is a pain, profits are nonexistent, systems are complex, fixes take time. I’m not stupid. So why do airlines behave as if they think I am?