Airline complaints surge 37 percent in latest report; US Airways is most complained about carrier

$1.00 per leg anyone?

Jasper,

I don’t disagree with what you are saying, I have no idea what the cost they will try to administer will be, however, if it is a mandated fee the government imposes onto the airlines, I believe it would be different. Am I mistaken? (Yeah, you never know what will happen with the gvmt)

Let’s just throw it around…maybe??

I’ve been a long time customer of US Airways simply because, as a resident of Pittsburgh, I’ve been forced to!

There are certainly two sides to this coin; the employees of US Airways have been put through hell over the past ten years, with an almost endless series of pay cuts, retrenchments, labor disputes, etc.. They have many reasons to be bitter and angry.

On the other hand, as a customer, I really don’t care. You may not like your job or your boss or your company, but you can’t (as a professional) let it seep into everything you do.

I was on a SWA flght to Midway over Christmas. It was one of the most turbulent flights I’ve ever been on…and yet the crew managed to keep everyone laughing and calm. “Just a helpful reminder, there are barf bags behind every seat!”

If the airlines want to win us over, they should remember that; “keep ‘em laughing!” Maybe the SWA crew had taken those comedy/improv lessons that Second City gives!

37% of what? Simple math would shed some interesting light on these reported numbers. I’m not a fan of any of the airlines. I think they all charge way too much and have had favorable legislation through out the years to give them the upper hand when it comes to dealing with customers. However, take the US Air figures. Divide the number of passengers that flew on US Air in the month of November, into the 101 complaints. The resulting answer will have so many zeros to the right of the decimal point that what you have is an insignificant percentage. Complain on! If you have time to spare, go by air!

If the American Public would stop searching for $50.00 seats, we would get better planes, employees, and service. Problem is, your “bargain” seat tossed my enjoyable flight out the window. I am not saying that airlines are not to blame for much of this, but we as consumers want the best for the least, and its not gonna happen.
If you cannot afford to fly, take your car. If you are going to fly obey the rules and regs, show up on time, wear appropriate clothing. Be respectful to the employees you expect respect from. Being a demanding bitch with ill behaved children, or travelling intoxicated is unacceptable. I might just be the man in the seat behind you, that stands up and puts you in your place, for the sake of the rest of us.

I am a former employee of US Airways who left the company in December 2004 after 27 years of service. During those years I was a customer service employee and a member of a union and for the last half of my career a member of mid-level management who worked closely with the unions and top executives of the company. US Airways’ history is liittered with golden parachutes given to executives who were brought into the company to revive what was once three separate, great airlines; USAir, PSA, and Piedmont. It goes without saying that none of them achieved the goal for the airline but did pad their own pockets with money they never truly earned at the expense of all the employees and the loyal customers of the airline. It breaks my heart to see reports ranking USAirways at the top in customer complaints. As you fly this beleaguered carrier, please try to focus more on the employee who is doing a good job. The majority of these employees have been through the “ring of fire” and are working twice as hard for half the wages they received just 7 years ago but worse they have far fewer tools to do their jobs. I summoned the courage to leave my airline career after realizing it was a continual spiral downward, but not all are in a position to make such a change. US Airways is really a “tale of two cities”, look at the opulent lifestyles of former CEO’s and executives since the 1990′s who have left the company worse off than they found it and then look at the dedicated employee who still strive everyday to keep the airline afloat and worry how they will pay their mortgages. It is indeed a very sad story.

Complain Complain Complain. You DON’T have to fly. Catch the bus. Ride a train. If you are aware of things that go on in the world in which you live, you would know why there is so much trouble at most of these airlines. You get what you pay for. They don’t want to pay their workers, have forced pay cuts on them, fuel is off the chart, and did you forget what 911 caused? I don’t see Continental Airlines on that list. The only thing you have to buy on Continental is alcohol and headsets. If you have your own headset you can watch the movie for free! They don’t charge for food and soft drinks. And even if they did. You could BUY OR BRING YOUR OWN FOOD. Its true those USAirways stories are bad, but their are better choices out there

Hello,

On January 13, 2008, I was scheduled to fly from Washington Reagan National to Burlington, Vermont on US Air Flight 3226, leaving at 9:10 pm. On that date, a snowstorm passed through the Phila/NYC/Boston area; the storm did not affect the Burlington airport approach conditions or the runways, which were dry at the time of our scheduled departure with no change until the following afternoon. I have a record of the weather to that effect. The planes flying this route are usually smaller jets, but they rolled a larger plane to the gate and eventually boarded us at 10:45 pm and shut the cabin door, only to announce at about 11:20 that the flight was canceled due to “weather”. One surly customer service person met the offloaded passengers and proved to everyone as she plodded through each passenger’s sad story that she was far more inconvenienced than we were. I left without taking her valuable time and found a room at a nearby hotel, called my wife to advise her of the situation, confirmed the weather conditions & forecast with her and made my reservations for the next day’s flight.

The next day, a US Air employee (we have his name and number) advised a few of us that our flight the night before had been cancelled because the larger plane was needed elsewhere in the system the following morning.

Later that week, I applied for a reimbursement of expenses (about $220) for the hotel room and one meal. The e-mailed response from “customer relations” on January 16 was that “…Deteriorated weather conditions made flying to Burlington an impossibility. It became apparent an improvement in this situation was not going to happen…the flight was cancelled for safety reasons.” Actually, the approach and field conditions at BTV on January 14, when I finally did arrive on a smaller, fully-loaded US Air Flt 3226, were considerably worse – low ceiling, limited visibility, wet runways and taxiways.

My loss was $220 and a day’s work, but that must be multiplied by the number of souls on the January 13 flight. US Air prevaricated itself out of a considerable amount of cash solely for its own convenience.

As I read the various complaints written in blogs and on other websites, I am convinced as are many others that US Air and others predictably violates its “Customer Service Plan”, (http://www.usairways.com/awa/content/aboutus/customersfirst/customerserviceplan.aspx) which it claims is the “Customers First” plan, “a joint effort of the airline industry, the US Congress, and the US Department of Transportation”, pertaining to cancellations due to weather vs. administrative/logistical considerations.

OK, we all know USAir has abysmal management. I’d personally love to meet the genius that came up with the “marginal revenue stream” idea of putting those tacky ads on the tray tables (and taking the airphones out). It amazes me that despite the cretinous management, a lot of realy dedicated people still work for the airline.

But I think management crossed the line from merely laughable, tacky and low rent into actual illegal business practices with their new “overweight baggage ambush” policy. If you haven’t experienced it, it goes something like this:

1) Book a deeply discounted economy class ticket. Get the standard contract language about change fees per fare basis etc. Fair enough. No mention of baggage policy.

2) Check in online for your flight. Get a boarding pass, still no mention of baggage policy. If you’re really curious, you can spend a while digging for the “contract of carriage” on the web site. But since it is subject to change up to the moment you board the flight. it is pretty much meaningless. In any event it says something about bags over 50lbs “may be subject to additional charges”. Shrug, OK. Last time somebody weighed my bags was 25 years ago, and it was by the pound for overweight.

3) Get to the airport. WHAMMO. BIG signs everywhere telling you that if any one checked bag weighs over 50lbs, that will be and extra $50 per bag. Surprise!! And it gets better. As of now, you can check two bags, and they can be 50 lbs each for a total of 100lbs of airlift required, at no charge. But check just 1 at 51lbs and cha-ching, that will be $50. Guess math and physics aren’t required for a airline industry MBA anymore.

Clearly this is a scam to rip off the vacation travelers who are flying on deeply discounted advance seats, have zero flexibility in their plans, and are likely loaded up with a bunch of heavy stuff they need to check. Interestingly, there is no mention of what happens if each of your carry ons weighs more than 50 lbs. Technically you could airship 200lbs besides yourself and pay nothing extra if you distributed it over 4 bags. But of course this isn’t about recouping reasonable airlift costs, it’s about a sleazy way of extracting some marginal revenue out of the loss leader fares back in economy.

Oh, and by the way, they don’t always enforce it, so it makes it even harder for the not so frequent traveller to figure out the scam and work around it. Really, really slimy.

I have one of the original USAir Dividend Preferred cards. At this point, after more than 20 years, I won’t be using it or USAir ever again.

How can an airline like US Airways treat people with no compassion and still get passengers in this day and age of competition? we recently booked 3 return tickets to Florida from Manchester In the united Kingdom as we where having a family get together with people from New Zealand, Unfortunately we got a phone call that the son off the family in New Zealand who was 12 years old had been rushed into hospital and sadly died, we immediately fly from the UK to NZ to be with them (it was my wife’s sisters son) he had had a brain bleed and died almost instantly.

On returning to the UK I contacted US Airways to say we would have to cancel our flights as there would be no family get together under the circumstances, there response was basically sorry for the loss but you have non refundable tickets so you loose £1800 and thank you for using US Airways.

I sent several emails asking them to use some compassion but the last email said it all here it is in full.

Dear Mr. Edwards:

Even though we understand your frustration, when you purchased your ticket, you agreed to the terms and conditions of a non-refundable ticket. We are not able to go beyond those perimeters of a non-refundable ticket, and therefore will close the file.

Sincerely,
Judy Ellefson.
US Airways Customer Relations
Corporate Office

Now even though you should read the terms and conditions most don’t as I didn’t but surely some compassion must come into play?

I will never use US Airways again and as the family concerned have had a full refund from New Zealand Airways feel US Airways are just exploiting the situation.

Yours Faithfully

Paul Edwards

US Airways has proved to be the most awful airline currently flying. My husband and I travel a lot – as in 4-6 flights per week. We have been flying US Airways for most of those flights in the past couple of years. We have almost never redeemed miles for free flights however, this week, our 17 year old daughter had the opportunity to intern with a film production company in LA so we redeemed miles to fly her out. A couple of days ago, we learned the production is going to wrap early so called to change our daughter’s return flight. 2 days and 4 attempts later, my husband finally got a supervisor named Carmen on the phone. He was polite but firm about what he wanted her to do. Carmen said she could call someone about releasing a seat on an earlier flight but would only do so if we agreed to pay $150.00. My husband asked if she would make the call and see if they would accept miles instead. He made it clear that he would pay cash if necessary but wanted Carmen to see if it was possible to use miles. She refused. When my husband reminded her that we are talking about arrangements for a minor child traveling alone and that he just wanted her to make the call and ask, she again flatly refused to even try. My husband was stunned and told her he had never been treated like this by any other airline and for as often as we travel US Air, he didn’t think a phone call was too much to ask. Carmen’s response: “Than call another airline. Thanks for calling US Air!” and she hung up.
Thank you US Air for stranding my 17 year old child who grew up in a very small town by herself in the city of Los Angeles. She is scared and we are panicking trying to find her another flight home.