Originally Posted by CLT

It's funny…everyone always remarks about how great AA used to be, but in the 1990s/early 2000s, I thought they were a pretty poor carrier, especially compared to US/UA.

I remember UA would do full hot meals on short segments like ORD-AUS with real metal utensils in Y and AA would just offer a nasty bagged sandwich passed out at the gate. Their S80s (which made up the majority of their domestic fleet at the time) had no IFE, whereas the majority of the US/UA domestic fleet had IFE…especially on long distance routes.

I found their staff pretty horrible too…the majority of AA staff I encountered during that time had this arrogant "we are the best" attitude that was pretty nasty. I recall this one incident from maybe 2003 or so…it was a cold, rainy evening in SFO…the type of weather where all you want to do is get to the hotel and go to bed ASAP. I just came in on a delayed CO EWR-SFO flight (I flew CO quite frequently back then) that accounting for the onboard delays and flight time, was around a 8 hour flight. The CO crew were awesome, but you could tell they were tired at the end of the flight. Anyways, I was on a shuttle bus to the hotel after landing, and an AA crew was also onboard. My crew from the CO EWR flight attempted to board and the AA crew very rudely told the CO crew that they needed wait for the next bus because "we don't ride with other airlines crews". Classy! All these years later, I still regret not speaking out on their BS…the bus was nearly empty and you just don't treat other people like that, regardless if they work for a competitor.

Once they dismantled their JFK/BOS American Eagle feeder routes to/from Eastern cities after 9/11, they essentially were worthless from a network standpoint for those living outside of NYC/BOS/MIA on the East Coast unless you were traveling westward.