Huh

is that not right? The FAs are most of the time on a power trip and unpleasant.

No in my experience. In 1,500 flights I have never felt threaten, not once.

sadly I have. I’m sure I’m not alone. We live in an environment where flight attendants make stuff up and you can’t push back or ask them to prove who’s right or wrong.

I’m surprised the thought police hasn’t jumped on this yet, but if it’s an adult beverage, that’s illegal by FAA regulations. (Admittedly, when flying long haul in coach in the old days, I would always bring wine splits to avoid drinking the free poison they served behind the curtain.)

Most times? Most times most people are just doing their job. Do they sometimes go on power trips, and is that unpleasant, yes. But I believe this is more about abusing one’s position to be uncooperative to make life easier on themselves. (And certainly not a most of the time thing for me.)

In fairness, we also live in a time where people are pulled off flights for extremely legitimate reasons. Working in that environment must be challenging at times.

Also in fairness, Elmira said nothing about being threatened in the post you quoted, just about it being unpleasant.

Last year, DL was the bottom for me in terms of PDB. UA and AA were "tied" for first place I believe.
This year, complete reversal.

Anyway:
5/13/26 - ALB-ORD - PDB of OJ or Water. I asked for a vodka and OJ and after a pause, got a "I suppose I can do that for you". What's very odd on this flight is NO snacks for the 2 hours. Only beverages. Thought it was very odd. FA's chatted about their new contract and when they'd get their retro pay.
5/13/26 - ORD-CID on the E550. - No PDB. Once in the air, bottle of water (no option for anything else) and then FA stood in the galley for 20 minutes on the phone. Then got the prepare cabin for arrival. Very disappointed. I had seen this on the thread about this aircraft and any type of F service basically being nothing the majority of the time.

We'll see how my return trip goes (although on 5/16/26 it's a 737 for both legs).

May 17
UA27 DEN-LHR

No PDB.

5/16/26 UA 465 CID-ORD
PDB of OJ or water. I was thirsty so had water (did not ask for anything else). FA immediately then also took "once in air, would you like anything" orders. Ordered screwdriver and she even brought snacks out. Significantly better than the ORD-CID flight where we got nothing.

5/16/26 - UA 1476 ORD-ALB
No PDB due to late catering. In fact, the pilots were 10 minutes late boarding (they boarded 10 minutes after boarding was supposed to start).
Once in air, turbulence (FA take jumpseats within 1 minute). Very mild turbulence, IMO, but understand nobody wants to get hurt. Maybe 30 minutes in, got the all clear and FA was very good. Even asked if I wanted a double for the first round of drinks. Also got our snacks.

5/13 UA1045 SFO-ORD - Was offered PDB of sparkling wine or water, and the FA even offered to take my coat, first time for me since after Covid.

SAN-LAX, FA did a water/OJ run, but a man sitting across from me asked for a coffee and the FA happily obliged.

Usually this 25 minute flight is operated by an E175 were the FAs do a round of drinks right after takeoff, but I believe ever since they started flying the 737 on this route, they are no longer attempting a round of drinks.

Had good experiences last week with PDB. On one flight, FAs offered water or sparkling wine, but when asked, provided other drinks. Then on EWR-IAD, the FA took full drink orders while bringing water during boarding, asked if he could serve in plastic cups due to potential turbulence (and yes, it was choppy), but did a full drink service in F on a flight that's under 30 minutes in the air. I'm not sure how much time the people at the back of the cabin got with their drinks before landing, but he also told pax to just hold onto them if they wanted as they prepared for landing.

That's great! I fly this route fairly frequently and 50% of the time there's absolutely no service inflight (and oftentimes no PDBs on the ground either). Recently an FA told me the flight was "1 minute too short" for serving drinks in F! (ironically, flight time for that particular EWR-IAD flight was 52 minutes - one of the longer flights I've had for this segment).

-FlyerBeek

5/22 RNO to SFO

Brought chocolates to the galley for FA during boarding and politely asked if pdbs were available.

He shared that due to turbulence out of RNO and flight time (38 minutes) there would be no inflight service, but he would take care of us once boarding was complete.

Which he did, handed us each 3 mini vodkas, 2 cans of club soda and cups of ice. Everyone else got water.

Mini #1 in hand on takeoff, brought the others home.

All 4 flights!

What did you ask for?

David