I saw the same thing when I flew on them. The one FA actually stood in the aisle and asked for everyones attention and shouted down the plane that NOTHING can be in seatpockets "even a candy bar wrapper"- where do they get these people.
They also leave the lights on - THE WHOLE FLIGHT!!!!!!! Even at night and for takeoff and landing... isn't that a safety hazard? How would your eyes adjust in an emergency? Not to mention its hell trying to sleep with those window lights on. They also make people raise the windowshades for landing and wake people up to do it! I thought that only applied to small planes?
Service wise they are awful. Cup of soda going to Texas and thats it. No inflight-cafe meals, no coffee service- once they give you your coke thats it. No pillows and blankets, and they don't hang coats in the closet. I guess the pilllows dont matter since even if you can sleep with the lights on they will wake you anyway to get you to take a tissue out of the seatpocket.
They do a bizarre safety demo thats nothing like the US Airways one- they turn around in the aisles and do all this weird stuff. The announcements are all prerecorded but they dont sound like US Airways announcements. They mention Republic Airlines over and over in the announcement. Everyone knows they are Republic and hates them, stop telling our customers who could care less that they are Republic. US Airways is the one who suffers from thier no service and nazi FAs.
The MidAtlantic flights were great and they are laying them off and giving those MAINLINE planes to Republic. It's outsourcing and the outsourced product is always worse. Especially with MDA because those people cared about thier customers and jobs probably more than anyone at US because they had lost them once before.
An MDA FA had her bid sheet in the seat pocket and the Republic FA told her to take it out. She asked how come, and he said its a FAR etc. She told him shes a mainline FA and has never heard of such a thing. He then told her its specific to the 170- so she said I'm MA Division, Ive flown these for two years, so thats not true. She took it out but asked to see his manual and he said its not in there, its just an "FAA rule." He also said "THIS ISNT MIDATLANTIC"
Aint that the truth! THEY ARE NO MIDATLANTIC!!! I sure hope Doug thinks the contract employees are making more money for US than the Midatlantic employees did.