[jimworcs]

Gromit,
It is bigoted only if it is not based on experience, but rather a prejudice based on nationality. I am afraid that you are looking for a bogeyman that might not exist. My children are American, so I think I could hardly be accused of being anti-American. However, the standards of service in US airlines really are amongst the worst in the world. Anyone who has travelled extensively will have experienced examples of poor service on most airlines. However, the issue is consistency. I have consistently, in the last 10 years or so seen a marked deterioration in the standards of courtesy and customer service in US based airlines. There has also been a deterioration in European airlines, but the fall has been no where near as far or as fast as in the US airlines. In general, far-eastern airlines seem to have maintained their standards.

US airlines since de-regulation have engaged in a race to the bottom, cutting standards of service to the bone. This serves them well in the domestic market, where they operate huge fortress hubs and have monopolies, so that even when service standards fall passengers have few options available to them to switch to other carriers.

Conversely, this serves them badly in international markets, as they typically do not enjoy a monopoly on city pairs. As a result, you get the somewhat odd spectacle of the US Airlines opposing any regulation in the domestic market, while fighting tooth and nail to prevent foreign competition and to retain regulation of international routes. This in the alleged home of free enterprise. Indeed, without protectionist measures such as the ownerships rules, revenue sharing and restricted routes, and government hidden subsidies, the US airlines would have very little international custom. When any route is compared with the international carriers of significance such as Lufthansa, Air France, British Airways, Qantas, Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines to name just a few, there is no way that any honest appraisal would find the US competitors superior. If you are unsure, I suggest you look at Skytrax, which is the largest consumer survey of service and satisfaction of airlines in the world and see how US airlines fare.