Yes.
would you want your children in the care of folks working in commercial transport?
Depends what part of the world, but here in the UK, most definitely yes, same would apply for the US in my opinion. By commercial transport I assume you are referring to commercial aviation? There are differences in safety in some parts of the world.
a rough, fast landing since there was some miscommunication between the controllers and the crew.
What? What is a 'rough fast landing'?
Even so, the crew had the time to inform us that we would be "landing real fast now," so we knew what to expect. Fast in, down hard, no hard feelings. Stuff came out of the overheads when they popped open, but it wasn't an emergency of any sort.
And you are citing this as a GOOD example of how things
used to be? Where would you like me to start.......
Put it this way, if there was a miscommunication between me and a controller I would have spent time sorting out the miscommunication and then performing a normal landing rather than informing the passengers that I was about to make a (reckless) landing that would be 'nothing to worry about'.
The lack of communication these days
Again, that is a bit of a mass generalisation. I recently had a tech problem that required a return to stand and I faced the passengers in the main cabin, made a PA explaining what the problem was, said I would speak to them again in 20 minutes (to the second) with an update and then walked along the isle answering any questions they had/ calming any fears. In the end we took a 3hr delay, but they were ALL happy because I was honest, explained in simple language what the problem was, what I and my company were doing about it and thanked them for trusting my judgement which is what they had paid the price of their ticket for. When they disembarked at destination I got several waves and thumbs up as they passed my side window. So, don't assume that because you had one bad experience everyone is the same.
combined with the fact that sometimes things REALLY go bad makes for a horrible environment.
That's called 'The World'. Life is rarely perfect and risk free and horrible things happen all over the world every minute of every day. If you look at the statistics you are much less likely to be on the receiving end of something horrible when on a commercial aircraft than you are walking across the road outside your house. If you don't like flying because of irrational fear, seek some help or don't fly. It is all about YOU doing something about YOUR perceived fear, you need to WANT to change it for anything to change. On this occasion the statistics don't lie; commercial aviation in the western world is by far the safest form of public transport.
You sort of expect something like air travel to get better, but it hasn't - it's gotten worse, at least from the perspective of knowing what's going on.
What's going on when? During an emergency? During a normal flight? During a delay? During a normal flight the passengers in general want to know who we are up front, what time we will be departing, what time we anticipate arriving at destination and some like to know how high we are and where we are occasionally whilst we are flying along. Other than that they want me to shut up so that they can enjoy the movie. You need to explain you comment further to get any more indepth response.
But - your reply lets me know that there are at least a few folks out there still paying attention.
If you want to patronise then you will get very little further response from people who may be in a position to offer informed comment.
PP