American Airlines last week announced another round of cuts in the number of flights serving Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. By April of next year, only 36 daily American and American Eagle flights will operate to nine cities.

Aviation analyst Michael Boyd of Evergreen, Colo., said it’s not personal, just business — “This has everything to do with airline economics and nothing to do with the failure of the city or the airport,” he told Post-Dispatch reporter Ken Leiser.

Still, for a city that Charles Lindbergh once called home, it’s difficult not to feel a little like Dubuque.

The move is the latest milepost in what has been a dramatic decline in airline service to Lambert since American acquired TWA in 2001 — just months before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 crippled the airline and travel industries. High fuel prices and the recession of 2007-2009 have forestalled any dramatic comeback for the industry.

In its glory days, St. Louis had direct service to more than 100 cities. By next year, that number — counting service from all airlines — will drop to fewer than 60. The last trace of St. Louis’ coveted status as an “airline hub” will all but disappear.

How should the community respond? The great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer” offers a solid insight. Mr. Niebuhr, a Wright City native who studied at Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves, famously appealed for “the serenity to accept the things [we] cannot change, the courage to change the things [we] can change, and wisdom to know the difference.”

Historically, St. Louis enjoyed far better commercial air service than a market of its size demanded. It was home to TWA, a major national carrier, and Ozark Airlines, a major regional carrier. Lambert did far more business as a connection point than as a point of origin or destination.

This was a major boon to area businesses. But as the airline industry consolidated and has been buffeted by continuous economic turbulence, surviving airlines use fewer hubs. St. Louis lost its special advantage. We now will receive the level of air service that’s justified by local demand — no better.

This is not without some consolation. The loss of a dominant airline generally means competitors enter the market. Southwest Airlines has a growing presence in St. Louis, with Lambert serving as a “focus” airport, a step below “hub” status. This competition, in turn, often means cheaper fares for leisure travelers willing to take a connecting flight.

Still, there’s no way to spin the drop in air service as anything other than a loss — one that we can accept serenely as something that largely is beyond our control.

St. Louis is good at serenely accepting bad news, chalking it up as beyond our control. We’re less adept at mustering the courage needed to change the things we can.

Though we no longer can boast about a long list of daily nonstop flights, we can more than make up for the loss to the business climate by focusing on fundamentals and committing ourselves to solving long-festering problems.

That means we have work together as a broader community, cooperating rather than competing and feuding with one another. It means our leaders would have to put aside narrow, selfish interests and focus instead on what is in the region’s best interests on issues such as  planning, transportation, taxation, economic development, social justice and government services.

We must be wise enough to accept the challenge and change the things that we can.