(FORTUNE Magazine) – Here's all you need to know about the operating logic of the airline industry: They use really big jets, capable of carrying hundreds of passengers. They use one door to board them. Why does this industry act as if it has 100,000 seats and no brains? What other industry gets caught price fixing, twice, and still manages to lose $12 billion in five years? What other business intentionally puts the customer last?

You don't really fly today, as much as climb a salmon ladder of anxiety. From ticketing to bag claim, you fight to get upstream, only to become sushi at any moment to one of the airline grizzlies--suspicious flight cancelations, scant comfort, bad attitude at high altitude, or schedule lotto in the hub-and-hope network--a clever system for collecting a lot of very angry people in one location.

Airlines and passengers each want the same thing: a pleasant experience for a fair price. But there is a mean dialectic at work. The worse it is for you, the better it is for them. They want to fill every seat on every jet--you want a row to yourself so you can move your leg an inch without the person next to you mistaking your intentions. Airline marketers spin service fantasies, while their operations managers search for new ways to cut back.

Delta, which dearly misses the foil of Eastern's incompetence, chopped services last December. Says a Delta crew person aboard a 767: "We've cut back on everything. There's one less attendant on this flight; they cut back on ground service, cut back on catering. We used to be the ones that did the most. No more. Now we're taking the lead at cutting."

USAir has embraced the mind-over-matter strategy, putting employees through a two-day exercise on positive thinking, the idea being, says one USAir staffer, that crew members substitute personality for lack of service. She could not finish explaining this without laughing, adding: "It's hard, flight after flight, after 12 or 14 hours of saying, 'We're really sorry about this.' "

Running an airline, of course, is complicated. Take ticketing. If a banking transaction is a grape, a United infomaniac once told me, an airline transaction is a watermelon. The system works fine if you are shipping whole watermelons. But show up at the ticket counter to make any more than a minor change, and you might as well have asked the agent to write code for Windows 95. Check your departure time and watch the line grow and the passengers growl.

Proceed to your gate. Some law of nature dictates that the distance from the terminal is proportional to the bulk of the load you bear. Got two carry-ons, a laptop, a portfolio, and a 2-year-old in tow? Very well, ma'am, that's Gate 400 W. It's not that you wanted to lug all this stuff onboard, but these days checked baggage can add at least an hour to your trip--remember those cutbacks. Ready to board? Great, but first, a preboarding announcement: Anyone with children--small, large, or ill-tempered--anyone needing a little extra time or a lot, anyone in first class, anyone who is a platinum-, gold-, silver-, bronze-, or aluminum-class frequent flier, or a member of the Elks, may board now--through that one door.

Rule of thumb for airline seating: If a passenger can't read the newspaper of the person seated in front of him, add another row. Don't, however, change the lighting. Hungry? "Got any peanuts?" I asked an America West crew member on a flight to Phoenix. "This is an airline, isn't it?" he lobbed back, along with a few bags of goobers. Indeed. To actually get an in-flight meal on today's airlines you have to fly more than three hours, and, of course, if there's anything worse than not getting airline food, it's getting it.

But hey, you're a very frequent flier. You can upgrade to first class and avoid the rabble. Sure you can. Go to any gate at DFW or O'Hare in the late afternoon, when the pros are flying, and you can witness a unique travel ritual. The hopefuls will be hovering around the counter like hummingbirds, trying to dip a beak in the first-class nectar. They size each other up while the agents make sure the actual first-class passengers--meaning, people who paid real money--are onboard before upgrading the wannabes.

Lose this gamble and you must run the gantlet, desperately seeking space in overhead bins choked with all matter of belongings except yours. With your briefcase, laptop, and garment bag, you bundle down the aisle, if possible whacking a bag against those smug bastards who Got In. "Check that, sir?" No, just throw me and my bags overboard when we get airborne. Put me out of my misery.

For the rest of the service world, the operating mantra of customer care in the Nineties is to underpromise and overdeliver. Exceed expectations. Yet airlines have resolutely stood by the overpromise and underdeliver strategy the way Fidel Castro clings to socialism, choosing, for some inexplicable reason, to raise our expectations impossibly high: Who makes those TV commercials that depict soothing earthmother/flight attendants fluffing pillows for tired businessmen anyway?

Most industries have discovered "partnering," building better relationships with suppliers and big customers. Airlines have a better idea: Let's cap at $50 the commission that travel agents--who sell about 85% of all seats--earn on domestic flights. Let's alienate the only people left on earth who understand the fare structure.

Then there's yield management. Here's how it works: It's 7:55 p.m. in Atlanta, and a passenger rushes up to a Continental flight heading for Newark at 8 p.m. He holds a ticket on Delta for what last week was a full coach fare but this week isn't. Nevertheless, this is revenue, money in the till that Continental could dearly use. "You've got empty seats, right, and here's a ticket," he reasons. "Just let me on." Oh, no, sir. No, no, no. There are fare schedules. There are tickets to be rewritten. The price has gone up because Continental Lite, the one-class, low-cost, fast-turnaround airline, was replaced on the Atlanta-Newark run by good old, two-class Continental, the one that went bankrupt twice. Never mind that the would-be passenger flies five times a month. Instead carriers gin up promotions to sell these excess seats for pennies to people who don't fly a lot--and won't be brand loyal--while irritating the bejesus out of people who do. That would be me.

The sad bottom line: Air travel has become one snarling pack, us against them--and both sides see it that way. "You're lucky we don't treat you worse, considering the way they treat us," a Delta agent in San Francisco offered. Elsewhere in that airport, an agent had these kind words for a dissatisfied customer: "This is the new airline industry, lady. Get used to it." And thank you for flying with us today.