No glassware in F/C is fine with me. It's dangerous anyway..who do you think 'washes' the shite..illegal aliens.. East or West.... and as a multimillion mile frequent flier in F/C of every major airline before I retired and went with the airline biz.. it never made a rat's ass of difference to me. What IS very interesting to see the bankrupt, broke, low-rent legacy Easties complaining about the West on something that makes no never mind using this as an excuse......BTW PSA was a good airline but GET OVER IT! This is 2008!!!! Living in the right CENTURY may be a lot to ask but PLEASE JESUS (my gardener), SHOW YOU THE WAY ;-)
A few items in your post bother me.
After "flying first class on all these majors", you make it sound like you picked to work for HP. Why on earth would you do that? - unless you live in PHX. In the mid 90's thru 2005, everyone I knew that worked in the West were treated aweful, had horrible schedules, and were the lowest paid in the industry. Many times on the airport shuttles to hotels, I'd see a few HP FA's and they were always complaining about management, their aweful pay scale, and "how can these new hires survive on that pay.." Granted, this was back when Franke or Ed Beauvis were running the show, almost everyone in the industry knew that HP was a place to go if you wanted your foot in the door to build experience, then move on.
Now I've flown frequently in First Class on many airlines as well, and even on Northwest, which was known to cheapen the their product before anyone else, still serves everything in glass in F. American & United's First Class product is LIGHT YEARS ahead of USAirways, and that is part of the issue, which is why I don't understand your perception. When every airline charges the SAME for First Class, including USAirways, that is where the employees and even folks buying tickets are NOT SEEING THE VALUE when they board a cheapened USAir product... while it may not be "cheapened" for America West, it most definitely is for UsAirways.... I recently flew from FLL to PHL in an Airbus A321, and my god, this plane has been butchered, and lets not talk about the inflight service... I felt like I was just served from a 7-11, yet not even *3* years earlier I had a full breakfast, on china, that was quite tasty (was some kind of apple pancake with eggs, 2 sausage links, and a potato-thing).
The arguments here are NOT about bashing the America West Employees, just its horrid management which seem to be stuck in 1994 still... except this time its Parker at the helm, not Beauvis... and the company is running a massive east coast operation now.
case in point: Midwest Airlines.
used to serve champagne on every flight, meals the size of something you'd expect from Ruths Chris.
Now: no more champagne, decent alcohol selection, pay to upgrade to signature, and Buy on Board that's not only above-and-beyond what everyone else is serving, but they're also charging a fair price with happy customers.
You do express and even overfilling the cup with ice you only get two cups out of a can. It's silly to NOT give the can with a cup that damn big.
