Originally Posted by ElmhurstNick
On my flight, somebody was able to carry the food up the stairs, and did not appear to spill any of it. I don't know if it was the crew or the provisioning staff, but somebody did it.
Your flight probably wasn't full, so there was extra room downstairs for the carts, and then the meal trays were carried upstairs by the crew.
I think in the OP's case there was just nowhere for the carts to go. Seems like downgrading the C meal is a better solution than, say, not loading the midflight snack or pre-arrivel meal for Y.
I do think it is odd they would send a 747 with a broken catering elevator to a downline station. After all if it could be easily fixed at HKG, SIN, or SGN, it could also have been fixed at ORD with minimal delay. But then again I don't know the full story.
Certainly I don't think this is due to lazy F/As.