Claire Harvey: Fly with them, but don't be sucked in by the slogans

Why do we let airlines make us cry? Homesick travellers know this feeling. It's the little throat-lump of pride you get when first catching a glimpse of a jumbo from home on some cold and grotty runway in the middle of nowhere.

It's the grateful little sob that must be choked back on hearing the familiar accent of a check-in clerk in an airport far from home, wanting to hug the hosties because they say "G'day".

It's patriotism, of course, and it's deeply irritating - because the airlines rarely deserve our love.

Air New Zealand and Qantas have just announced plans to sack local maintenance and engineering staff because they can get cheaper labour overseas.

All the airlines whack "fuel levies" on top of already hefty ticket prices to insulate their profits from the global fluctuations which every other industry just has to wear.

They cancel flights when they're half-full so they can jam-pack travellers on to another service. They make it as tricky as possible to redeem frequent-flyer points.

The international carriers are corporate giants, and they naturally see their principal duty as making money for shareholders. To them, we are customers, not compatriots, but they have worked out how to make us like them so much that we're prepared to overlook all that corporate rapaciousness.

Qantas' slogan is "The Spirit of Australia". Air France for years advertised itself as "One of the Best Places on Earth". Cathay Pacific is "The Heart of Asia". Air Tanzania is "The Wings of Kilimanjaro", which seems an odd mixing of metaphors.

We bestow airlines with an ambassadorial authority unique to aviation (the "national airline", we say, or "the flag-carrier").

The advertising music is never a cheesy jingle, always an anthem; like Pokarekare Ana for Air New Zealand, or British Airways' stirringly operatic Flower Duet campaign.

The Qantas theme is "I still call Australia home", which might sound like a corny pantomime number but which makes even the most casually nationalistic Australians go all weepy.

It is embarrassing to be so easily manipulated by advertising agents, but that just proves how effective it is.

Kazakhstan was so offended about mockery of its national carrier that it has threatened to sue British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

Cohen has been playing a weirdo Kazakh named Borat Sagdiyev for years, and the Kazakh Government seemed to take it all with a bit of good-natured grumbling, until Borat showed up at an MTV awards ceremony in Lisbon this month and announced he flew in on an Air Kazakh propeller-powered plane operated by a pilot smashed on vodka.

Mocking the national airline was just too much, said Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Yerzhan Ashykbayev at a press conference last week, hinting darkly at Borat's intentions.

"We do not rule out that Mr Cohen is serving someone's political order designed to present Kazakhstan and its people in a derogatory way," Mr Ashykbayev said.

"We reserve the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks."

This Thursday, Judge Stan Thorburn of the Auckland District Court will tell us whether Air New Zealand is "fare dinkum" or not. The Commerce Commission is prosecuting the airline for 20 alleged breaches of the Fair Trading Act, relating to what it says are "misleading" newspaper advertisements for enticingly cheap flights.

The enticing prices were studded with asterisks, which pointed to fine print detailing extra charges, levies and taxes.

One of these ads said "Fare Dinkum" underneath a $189 price - with an asterisk pointing to the real, much higher, fare.

Air New Zealand says the customers are smart enough to know the asterisk is a warning about extra charges. The Commerce Commission says it is deceptive and "not at all fair dinkum".

I wouldn't presume to advise Judge Thorburn on who is right, but the advertisements provide another example of how an airline appeals to our sense of community.

"Fare Dinkum" only works because it's an Antipodean in-joke. It is supposed to tell us something about the airline - not only that we can trust Air New Zealand, but that the company is an embodiment of something nice about this country, a casual, honest spirit.

All this is fine. It's nice to encourage patriotic feeling. It's great that we feel proud of the cabin crew in their new Zambesi merino wraps, even if they look mighty impractical (you'd have to be quick to nip them out of the way in the toilet when the flush starts that terrifying whoosh).

But if these companies are to appeal to our higher sense of national loyalty, they take on a responsibility to behave in ways that make us proud.

That means honouring their schedules even if the flights are not always full. It means spending a bit more on wages to protect local jobs.

Maybe then we won't have to feel like sentimental fools for singing along with the advertisements.