Yeah, the idea that one USA legacy airline has consistently better in-flight service than another strikes me as ridiculous. Among the legacy carriers, "luck" is the biggest determinant of the quality of your cabin crew. I will say that WN has a culture that produces "friendlier" flight attendants than the legacy carriers (which, overall, is good) and some of the start-ups (like JetBlue) have more motivated cabin crews.

Foreign flight crews are a whole different story as, obviously, some cultures have different attitudes toward service and the appeal of being a flight attendant (and hence the applicant pool) is different in different countries.

I will say that UA in-flight staff is better than their old company's reputation. Indeed, I applaud their in-flight training group for keeping up standards as the rest of the company seemed to be on auto-pilot for many years. Because CO's reputation was better, perhaps you expect more from their in-flight crews which, occasionally, can lead to disappointment.


I think this is correct: it's ground personnel that can be materially different in different cities. There are good and bad employees in every city, but the idea that MSP gate agents are going to be "the same" as EWR gate agents is silly. Unlike flight attendants, airport personnel tend to be drawn from the local community and, obviously, there are still significant regional differences between cities in America.

Of course, who really cares? I'm not going to avoid going somewhere because the local airport staff isn't as friendly as I'd like them to be. And I'm not going to avoid connecting at EWR because I prefer another airport's ground staff to be better. In general, the differences are modest anyway, and you get good and bad apples everywhere.