Do flight attendants really hate their passengers?

When, exactly, did flight attendants stop caring about us?

I ask for two reasons: First, because of the luscious new trailers for the upcoming TV show "Pan Am," which depicts svelte young stewardesses -- yes, that's what they were called back then -- serving passengers.

Hard to swallow, that one. But yes, they served passengers back in the day.

And second, because of the preponderance of horror stories from readers like you that suggest things have gone too far in the other direction -- from the "coffee, tea, or me" stereotypes of pre-deregulation air travel to modern-day flight attendants who may actually hate us.

Well, "hate" may be too strong a word. How about "strongly dislike"?

Consider the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index numbers. Here are the 10 worst-performing companies, according to the survey. The score you see next to the company is on a scale of one to 100.

1. Pepco Holdings (54)

2. Delta Air Lines (56)

3. Time Warner Cable (59)

4. Comcast (59)

5. Charter Communications (59)

6. United Airlines (61)

7. US Airways (62)

8. American Airlines (63)

9. Continental (64)

10. UnitedHealth (65)

That's five airlines in the top 10. You have to work pretty hard to pull in that kind of performance, and it can only happen with the full cooperation of your employees.

But it's the stories from passengers like you that make me wonder if the love has turned to hate. And I'm not even talking about the headline-grabbing reports like flight attendant Steven Slater's meltdown on JetBlue Airways.

Lea McFall was flying from India back to the U.S. on American Airlines when one of her friends started feeling a little ill. The likely cause was her final meal in Delhi. She had a severe case of food poisoning.