Some recent US travel experiences
 

Living in the US right now. Some recent US flight experiences:

- Almost NO checking of boarding passes onboard, very rare indeed
- Captain standing in the aisles during loading and help to load luggage in overhead bins
- Captain making flight data announcement standing at the PA at the front of the cabin, visible to all
- Captain sounded very excited and saying we were about to 'blast off' like the cabin announcements you used to get on Virgin Blue in their early days, that was a half empty flight from Orange County to San Francisco
- Have flown lots of Alaska sectors in brand new 737-900's - nice plane, and also some nice new United A319/320's.

I've been coming over here for 25 years now, and I have to say, compared to the old days, the domestic planes are looking a LOT LOT nicer... they used to look dirty and old compared to Australian fleets, but now I would say the reverse. Yes, the AA MD80's are not good, but they are fast becoming somewhat of an exception, well in the west/northwest anyway. And I don't think I've had a widebody sector over here in 2 years, compared to the old days of half empty sectors on DC-10's with Northwest Airlines in the 90's! I feel pretty safe now on US airlines on the whole.

I remember loving the sight and sound of American Airlines 707s flying in and out of Sydney in the 70s.

It's not just in the US they are not checking boarding passes.

In Europe I know of at least British Airways (shorthaul, not sure about longhaul), Virgin Atlantic and KLM who no longer require a boarding pass check at the aircraft door.

AA don't need to fly to Australia. QF does all of it for them through codesharing. If anything you can probably expect AA to start LAX-AKL, but nothing to Australia. There's just no need, it's a crowded market as is.