What is it with airline attendants making headlines every time you turn around these days? For all the ink they're getting, you'd think they were scandal-ridden politicians or scandal-plagued athletes or scandal-stained Hollywood stars.

Instead, one day a JetBlue attendant is in the spotlight for flipping his lid over a luggage altercation with a passenger and fleeing the parked plane down an emergency-evacuation chute he deployed.

Another day, a Southwest Airlines attendant gets 15 minutes of fame for rescuing an infant from a mother who slapped the child during their flight. (The good news for mom: Surprisingly, the airline made no attempt to tack on a $25 fee for in-flight child care.)

Who's on the front page tomorrow -- a Delta attendant who defies protocol by giving out extra peanuts to everyone who had to accept the middle seats? Aren't these attendants supposed to be like offensive linemen, doing their work unnoticed in the trenches, quietly appreciated instead of attracting attention?

Now the fed-up JetBlue attendant, Steven Slater, has hired a publicist -- who formerly represented Monica Lewinsky, among others -- because of all the media inquiries he's received. The longtime airline employee has reportedly been offered a reality show that would focus on other people who exit their jobs in dramatic fashion

Mr. Slater, like many of us, misses the good old days of air travel.

The publicist, Howard Bragman, said Mr. Slater told him, "I used to supply chateaubriand for people going to Europe on TWA, and now I throw a bag of Cheetos at someone who can't be bothered to take a shower before they get on an airplane," according to the Hollywood Reporter. (If I shower, any chance I can have an extra bag of Cheetos tossed my way?)

Southwest attendant Beverly McCurley is the one who intervened when she felt a female passenger was abusive toward her crying 13-month-old daughter. No doubt many other passengers were relieved by Ms. McCurley's action, because few of us want to step in ourselves in such situations.

The experts say to ease such confrontations by offering help to an exasperated parent while acting non-judgmental. Sounds tricky, since judging the person as an unfit parent is clearly what's going on. If I'm that mom everyone is clucking at, I'm going to say, "OK, how's about the first parent who can say they were always a perfect model of patience with disobedient children come up here and take this mad munchkin off my hands for a while." Yeah, that'll shut 'em up (though the kid will keep crying, certainly).

Amid all this air turbulence, JetBlue's timing seemed a little off last week in renewing a special offer to put people on airplanes incessantly. People had the chance to pay $499 or $699 to fly wherever JetBlue goes around the U.S and Caribbean for a 30-day period in September-October.

This sounds like a great deal, at first glance. (Does JetBlue fly to Cincinnati and St. Louis, for instance? If so, it would be great to see what a Major League Baseball game is like.) A decade ago, it would have been a no-brainer because of the fun of flying. But who truly enjoys a trip to the airport these days, aside from people who might be fleeing a felony arrest?

The one piece of good news for local fliers last week was the Allegheny County Airport Authority's abandonment of the idea of selling off Pittsburgh International Airport's parking lots to pay off airport debt. A consultant's report showed that there would be insufficient public benefit to justify letting a private operator jack up the parking rates.

For once, it sounds like John Q. Public wins out, at least while he's outside the airport terminal. Once inside, he may expect a different story.

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