Slightly off-topic, but still on the subject of getting pissed off at poor service while travelling by air.
I've found a lot of American so-called "international" airports to be absolutely abominable in the service they provide to international travellers. Yesterday, I was returning from LGW to PHL and disembarked at arounf 3:30pm to find an immigration hall not just packed with "alien" passengers, but overflowing down the corridor so that they had to let people up the escalator in groups of 20.
I had to wait in the queue for the immigration officer for an hour and half in a hot, sweaty, smelly and overcrowded snaking queue, struggling with my carry-on baggage among hordes of screaming kids. After an eight hour flight, it was a nightmare. The stress it engendered completely nullified any extra relaxation I got by paying the premium for a business class seat. By the time I got out of the airport I was fuming and ready to rip someone's head off. Not air rage, but airport rage - and I normally consider myself to be pretty level-headed.
This isn't the first time this has happened at PHL (although it was the worst). I've also had problems at IAD and JFK. Not only that, but PHL baggage handling is simply atrocious. Luggage is ALWAYS late onto the carousels, so you often have to hang around for an hour after you've disembarked (assuming you haven't already waited that hour out in the immigration queue). It's frequently lost and because he airport is so woefully unprepared for the amount of traffic it receives, they have teams of people taking the luggage off the carousels and stacking it in random piles around he customs hall almost as soon as it arrives so as to make room for the next flight.
Maybe I'm just being over-critical, but it seems to me that a lot of US airports make insufficient provision for the number of foreign passengers who arrive at peak times. It's not really a very good advertisement for your country when the first thing a foreign visitor has to do after a long and tiring flight, suffering from jetlag, is wait for ages in a hot stuffy queue.
I have to say you never see that at LHR or LGW - foreign passengers are usually admitted within five minutes or so of arriving in the immigration hall. In fact, at LGW, foreign business class passengers are issued with special "Fast Track" coupons to allow them speedy passage through immigration and customs.
I should add that US Airways(who I usually travel with) provide excellent service, and the customs and immigration officials at the airports I've always found to be pleasant and efficient. My gripe is with the airports and the airport authorities. Where are all our airport tax dollars going?