Air travel and branding

When I travelled to Wellington last week, I had a few observations about air travel and branding.

• Air travel is a designed experience - mostly because of safety and regulatory issues. Service people deliver mostly scripted lines, and it has somewhat of an air of liturgy about it.
  
  
• The purely functional design of airplanes and runways is iconic and, even though not designed as art (or maybe it is?) it comes across as art. To me anyway!
  

And yet there are a whole lot of things about air travel that meet the needs of the airline or the airport, but aren't customer-centred.

In an extensive ecosystem like air travel, how can one player make the difference? The article below sheds some light:

Climb Aboard The Plane Of The Future - Forbes.com