Nationalism and air travel

After my plane from Geneva to NY stopped short after an attempted takeoff, the bewildered, queasy, and frighened passengers were told that an engine was reportedly "abnormal," but that engineers from Zurich would investigate and, if things looked OK, we could take off. Lovely. When a flight attendant noticed my state of anxiety (could it be the franglais yelping that clued her in?) I was reassured that the airline was Swiss, and that the Swiss couldn't possibly screw up. I was then assured by the man seated next to me that our pilot was German. A religious Jewish woman asked him if that was supposed to be a good thing.

All told, the plane made it, thanks, of course, to the superior aviation ability of certain Western European nations. Like, whatever.