Originally Posted by
AlwaysAisle
I remember one US flight I took in 2008, PHL-RDU. That time US was no complimentary beverage in economy, remember thinking that US is heading to be LLC (although WN has a complimentary soft drink service). I had a coworker who had an elite status in US, and used to tell me even US trans-con flights, PHL/PIT-LAX did not have any entertainment system. Remember this was before in-flight Wi-Fi and this was the time cell phones had to be turned off during the flight. The coworker used to tell me even on LAX-PHL flight first class was served a boxed meal, look something similar to a snack box sold in economy and drink service in first class was plastic cups. I used to tell this coworker over at AA, drink service in F is using real glass, meal service on a tray with a cloth napkin, real silverware, oven hot meal in ceramic china.
You and your co-worker both just happened to fly US at very unfortunate times.
They did temporarily provide BOB meals to F pax for a very-short period of time (less than a year) when the airline was in deep financial trouble. Hot meals, with real silverware on china returned once the merger with HP occurred and got progressively better every couple of years. Right before the merger, I thought US meals were on par with, if not better than AA meals, in both quality and quantity.
The no-drink policy was only in place for a couple of months as well. IIRC they started charging for soft drinks and water in Fall 2008 and quickly ended the program in February or March 2009.
I'm not sure when your coworker flew US, but IFE was discontinued in Fall 2008 during the height of the GFC. They had planned to launch a new seatback video system (IIRC the system was Lumexis) but for some reason that plan never took off. WiFi was introduced to the A321 fleet in 2010, and was expanded to the rest of the fleet in 2012.