When you travel, you can’t ignore what’s going on in the airline industry. It affects you in a very basic way. As I write this, one airline is contemplating yet more fare hikes. Another drops first class. Pilots are on strike in Europe. And 2009 is announced as the “worst year ever” – it’s endless and it’s a lot of bad news. And let’s not whitewash things: the airline industry is facing difficult times. As are many industries and many people.

A few days ago, a friend posted a photo of her hotel room on Twitter. The view was spectacular: a vast beige tableau framed by a room that seemed to integrate itself perfectly with the natural world outside. And that was enough to make the doom and gloom vanish, for a little while at least. It was a reminder of what travel affords us, of its possibilities. And why we imbue certain business (like the airline industry) with qualities it does not even seek to possess. Airlines make us emotional on so many different levels. The industry itself ignores this fact at its peril. And so lately, with the economic turbulence rocking all fronts, the industry has looked to the bottom line at the expense of the emotional experience of travel itself – even while using that emotional tug in their marketing. That’s the disconnect right now but I’m almost certain this will right itself.

Being in the media myself, I know that bad news is big news. But good news? Well, that’s not news at all. I understand why, both as a writer and as an avid consumer of news. It’s just not as interesting. A quick look at what you’re watching on TV will confirm this.

In the next month, I’m flying at least once a week. Mostly for business. And the airports will not be full of grumps (except, perhaps, for LGA, but I don’t see how it’s possible to be cheerful there). Things will move along efficiently. More often than not, I’ll get to my destination on time. The service onboard will be friendly. I won’t have much to complain about. And so there will be no news of my travels. Someone will ask me how my trip went, and I’ll reply that it went fine. I almost never have anything exciting to report about a flight except if I see something especially fine on the in-flight entertainment (I discovered HBO’s Bored to Death on a recent flight and can’t stop telling people about it) or if I spill something on my pants. I tend to spill things.

I’m an optimist about the industry. I remain confident that the industry will continue and thrive again. Why? Because travel is in our nature, and tourism isn’t about to disappear. It’s going to boom again when the economy picks up. It always does. And as much as businesses are relying on video conferencing or even things like Second Life (!) for their meetings (yes, IBM uses Second Life to stage regular meetings with its far-flung workforce), the face-to-face meeting is not an extravagance: it’s a human necessity.

For travelers, it’s a good idea to remember that most of the time, the airline industry does exactly what it says it’s going to do: it gets you where you want to go. And it does it well.