Scottie

I hadn't flown Y in a while until Wednesday, and was amazed that on two flights (451 BDL/PHL and 693 PHL/PIT) there was no beverage service at all. The only sighting of a FA was to collect newspapers at the end of each flight. When the standard "It was our pleasure serving you" announcement was made arriving in PHL, a PAX loudly exclaimed "Did I miss something??" causing much laughter. I've since asked two GAs when beverage service was discontinued, and both said no such change had been made -- although one added "sounds like some FAs are getting lazy" (followed by a riff about "maybe it's because they're working for $2.50 an hour"). Anyone else run into this situation -- or did I miss something?

CLTFlyer

I've noticed that if it's a very short flight (under an hour, probably much less), there will be no service in coach, but they'll take drink orders in F. After all, before, there was probably just the express beverage service offering only a few choices, pre-poured.

wahooflyer

According to Consumer Affairs, there's supposed to be a beverage service in coach on all flights over 30 minutes, both mainline and express.

Be sure to write Consumer Affairs with the date and flight number if you encounter any lazy FAs; there's no excuse for not serving beverages on a 30-minute+ flight other than severe turbulence.

sts603

I encourage reporting that. The airline needs to do something to get the lousy FA's out of there. I'm sure there are many still on furlough who would like the job back.

JAXPax

I've only been in coach a couple of times in recent memory on US, but one where there was no beverage service was DCA-PIT on mainline. I believe the flight time was only 40 minutes or so.

On Express, I've found lack of a beverage service to be quite common, especially on flights with PSA. Apparently a one hour flight (of time in the air, not gate to gate) is too short for a flight attendant to serve drinks to a 50-seat RJ... or so one flat out told me. JAX-CLT always has a full beverage service in the main cabin, plus the usual in First, on mainline but Express rarely serves a drink in my experience.

sts603

I think the 1 FA flights feel like they can get away with it. Pax need to start revolting and complaining in droves, or just hitting their call buttons.

wahooflyer

The lazy FA syndrome happens all the time on the Mesa-operated RJ flights fom CHO to CLT, but interestingly never on the Dash 8s run by U's Piedmont subsidiary on the same route. The RJ flights are about 40 minutes, and the props 50 minutes.

Now that I've been armed with the 30-minute rule from Consumer Affairs, I always ask the FA when boarding these short hops, "so, will there be a beverage service today?" Fortunately, so far even the Mesa FAs have said yes.

cedric

"Beginning June 1, US Airways will make the following changes to its complimentary beverage service:

*

Flights between 0 - 224 miles - No beverage service
*

Flights between 225-399 miles - Limited beverage service
*

Flights of 400 miles or more - Full beverage service "

http://www.usairways.com/travel/infl...rage/index.htm

GalleyWench

It sounds like Consumer Affairs needs to coordinate with Inflight Services before they make those comments. BDL-PHL is a "request only" flight, meaning that if someone asks for something to drink we get it. However, PHL-PIT is a short haul beverage flight, meaning coffee and o.j. in the morning and coke, diet coke and sprite after 10:00. They were wrong not to offer that service to you. It's hard to believe we used to serve a hot meal between PIT and PHL, I remember pancakes and syrup on that market a lot! Nothing like trying to clean up a ton of messy syrup on a DC-9 on that flight! LOL
As far as the 30 minute rule goes, I've never heard of that. They base the service class on the service time available, subtracting the climb out and descent. Technically, we're not supposed to get out of our j/s's until we've reached 10,000 feet so you lose some time there.
I've flown with many f/a's that are willing to run out juice and coffee in the morning on some of the shorter flights, but we always tell the people that it's not normally a service flight so that they aren't upset the next time when the f/a's don't serve it.
It's ironic how we don't serve many of those flights, but we still serve on the DCA-LGA and LGA-BOS flights which are only 25-30 minutes long. We did the last 2 days with full airplanes, a challenge but we managed to finish them all wind and all.

otralot

Those shuttle flights are way expensive like 200 bucks one way and 98% business travelers os its in you bets interest to treat them nice.

GalleyWench

I treat everyone the same way, business travellers on full fare tickets and people on the cheapest GoFares. People are people, and should be treated equally.
Lately the shuttle has been carrying a lot of leisure travellers that are connecting in DCA to Florida and some of the newer markets, but the majority are on business.

flygirl97

Fare prices does not determine if the flight gets a service or not. Also, your FA's were probably clueless of the service....not lazy. Every month, the company upgrades/downgrades service to all our cities. There is a "Service Guidelines at a Glance" pamphlet in our crewrooms that tell the current info. However, the company is not consistent in restocking the pamphlets. I just got the Feb. issue....the last one I had was from Nov. 04. When we start the service we all joke about who has the most recent one. Go easy on your FA's too......don't you read the papers or watch the news??

sts603

I hate to be cynical but when has there been a service UPGRADE recently? I've noticed a lot of downgrades but haven't been surprised by more service anytime recently.

T/BE20/G

I'm glad you notice this difference. I'm a pilot with Piedmont, and I know that it's pretty rare on our flights for the flight attendants to not serve unless there is legitimately not enough time or too much expected turbulence. Note, of course, that sometimes we expect more turblence than we encounter, so it may seem that a service could have been provided, while we asked the FA to remain seated due to expected bumps.

JS

I beg to differ. I flew from PHL to SBY and back, both ways on a Piedmont Dash-8, and on the outbound flight, it was full and we had a beverage service. The return flight was less than half full, yet the flight attendant stayed in her seat the entire flight.

If US Airways can't make up their mind whether they are going to have a beverage service, they should just give up like AA and announce that there will be no beverages, ever.

US' Chapter 11 partner, UA, has the same problem with Channel 9. Maybe it will be on, maybe it won't. US and UA are perfect for one another -- your service is a roll of the dice.