What happened is called DEREGULATION and it happened in 1978! You think the snack boxes are bad, the maintenance is farmed out to the lowest bidder, mostly outside the USA with little or no FAA oversight. Many of the DC-9's (NW) and 737-200's (DL) are 30-35 years old. All those "Lawn Dart" jets are flown by kids who make NO money and have NO experience. Every 2-3 years the Lawn Dart holding companies have to rebid their services with the respective airlines, the seniority deck gets shuffled, and you get another group of young pilots who have agreed to work for less money than the one's they replaced. They all think they'll someday make the big $$$, but those days are gone. Many of the pilots are foreign nationals-not US citizens- who are allowed to work in the USA while if we went to their respective countries to ask for a job they would throw us out! The Lawn Darts choke the Air Traffic System so you see monster delays in EWR, PHL, ORD, SFO almost daily. Everybody gets a cheap fare but the US Taxpayers end up getting stuck with paying airline pensions.
Having said all that, I wish I could tell you it's going to get better!