While I fully respect your right to your opinion, I disagree entirely. It is of course possible that the reason these 13 million flights had no incidents is because there were Cabin Crew present to prevent the incident happening in the first place. It's not all about fixing a problem when it happens, the main focus is on ensuring things are done properly to ensure nothing goes wrong that requires fixing.
I was Cabin Crew for a UK airline for two years - in that time I had one emergency landing, one near evacuation due to a security alert, severe turbulence, numerous medical incidents and, of course, the daily safety duties. Every single duty I did involved me using a large amount of the training I was given when I first started flying. That training isn't all about what to do in a crash, a lot of it focussed on how to handle a variety of other scenario's that will be likely to happen more regularly. If we refuelled the aircraft with passengers on board, we had certain criteria that had to be applied. This wasn't to make the passengers more comfortable, it was to make them safe. If I insisted that a passenger put a bag into the overhead locker, it wasn't to make them comfortable, it was to make them SAFE. At least twice on every sector, the passenger doors will be operated, they will be armed and disarmed, the cabin will be secured for takeoff/landing, security checks will be carried out, flight deck access is monitored etc. etc. This is all for safety, while it doesn't fix a problem, it prevents a problem from arising. If it's not done properly then a problem may very well arise making the flight UNSAFE.
You will find that every airline will adapt it's customer service standards and policies around the requirements of safety. It's not the other way round and it never will be. With regards to the number of train crashes compared to the number of plane crashes - that's a completely irelevant comparison. I don't know much about the rail industry but that tells me that they need to prioritise safety more than they do now. Like the aviation industry and like the Cabin Crew that operate on the aircraft.
As was mentioned earlier, if you had ONE passenger on an A320, you would still have four cabin crew as you require that number to operate exits. No airline would provide four cabin crew for one passenger if they were only there for customer service which further highlights my point that that is not their primary function. I appreciate that your training on a ship may lead you to believe that customer service is the primary role, but I would imagine that you would have been part of a very large team of people on that ship, some of whom would have been there primarily for safety. Forgive me if I'm wrong, I'd be the first to say I don't know anything about operating as crew on a ship.
On an A320, you often have just four cabin crew to make sure safety standards are adhered to. You can't miss something, thinking it's ok because somebody else will do it - it's a very small team on these aircraft and everybody takes their jobs very seriously. If I see one member of cabin crew on this forum who says that Customer Service is more important, I will be truly shocked. You have said already that most people perceive Cabin Crew to be there just for customer service - that's fine, but if somebody does think that I will be happy to educate them! I will not have anybody thinking that crew are just waiters/waitresses in the sky. Believe me, if crew behaved in the way that the public perceive them, safety would soon be at the front of every passengers mind as it would now be compromised. They would then be wondering why the crew weren't focussing on the safety aspects.
It just proves the point that perception isn't necessarily true. This is, of course, just a humble opinion.
FJ2k