Maybe? Standard of living is pretty high in Singapore, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, all of whom have vastly better air travel experiences than the US. M

Maybe? Standard of living is pretty high in Singapore, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, all of whom have vastly better air travel experiences than the US. My inclination is that it's just linked to an overall decline in service across the board in the US. Even something as pedestrian as Starbucks or Tullys in Japan and Korea is a different class of customer experience than here. (The US isn't alone in this, of course -- the worst flight I've ever had was on a Spanish airline, and most European discount airlines are miserable. But you sort of expect that when "discount" is in the name of the service...)