Recently I was browsing through Route Management, trying to increase some of my Flight Loads. When I look at Flight Rating, I see things affecting it negatively were Price, Flight Attendants, and Staff Mood. On the worst routes, I made a new Cabin Config. with Additional F/As, I lowered some prices that I'd knew were too high when I'd set them, and I increased my staff's salaries. However, this last change did not affect my staff mood in business or economy class at all. Does anyone know how to increase your staff's mood as well as your image overall (on your overview page?)
Image also takes time to adjust. The way the system is set up, your first flight provides your "baseline" image. For example, your initial image rating for First Class will be the image rating of your first flight with First Class available. It will jump from 0 to whatever the rating is. After that point, it seems to move much slower. It isn't so much an average (Image Rating / Passengers) as a continual sliding scale.
Best way to increase image... fly new planes, fly popular planes, keep them in good maintenance (about 3-4 hours each day -- try not to have different maintenance times on different days. It's best to try and keep it the same every day), use as many flight attendants as possible, and pay your employees well. Seat space is helpful, but hard to directly control. The type of seats used has more effect on seat space than adding seat pitch in the cabin configuration tool.
No, it doesn't affect the "staff mood" on the ratings report of the flight. The only thing that affects staff mood is how much they get paid. Increasing the number of flight attendants increases your Image factor for that flight.