Also remember: airline food (in coach) has sucked since the deregulation days. The minute a trip to Europe in coach stopped being $2000 (in 2017 dollars), the food got bad enough that every stand-up comic in the country wrote material about it.

Even in 90s, when I was first flying TATL in Y five or six times a year (and just figuring out what frequent flier miles were), I'd usually grab a burger at ORD, board a 10PM-ish flight out, and try to sleep all the way to London. Seat pitch was maybe an inch or two more than E- today, but definitely less than E+ today.