Comments on: US Airways explains last weekend

By: Peter Murray

Peter Murray — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 05:09:29 +0000

There is more here than meets the eye. As a moderately savvy traveler, I was watching the FAA’s National Airspace System Status Summary throughout the day, and I documented this bit of information on my blog (http://dltj.org/2007/05/usairways-no-more/

The only abnormality was an odd message on the National Airspace System Status Summary was a message that the Philadelphia airport was closed to U.S. Airways traffic at the request of the airline due to “lack of ramp space.”

How I wish I had a screen capture of that message. It went on to say that the FAA was not to be held responsible for this closure and that it only affected U.S. Airways flights.

Something else was happening that weekend…

By: Mike H

Mike H — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 04:52:54 +0000

I can’t vouch for how the airlines handled the situation (I don’t work for an airline either), but I can vouch for the nasty weather. I live in NJ, halfway between Philly and New York, and that storm really made things awful. The sleet and frozen rain fell all day, and I wound up having to chop about 1-2 inches of ice off my driveway just so I could get in and out. One of the TV commentators I saw was berating the airports for not having enough de-icing fluid, but once you got the ice off, it iced back up in no time. They could have sprayed the same plane all day and it wouldn’t have made much difference.

By: Peter K.

Peter K. — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 19:57:56 +0000

My wife, along with her ski club, had an 8-day ski trip in Utah that culminated with a return fligh on Delta, Salt Lake City to Newark, on Saturday March 17 departing at 10 am. They left the resort on time and their bus dropped them off in front of the airport a full two hours before their flight. When they opened the doors to go in, they were faced with a wall of people, all lined up to get to the check-in counters. They could barely get into the building as packed as it was. There was no hope of getting anywhere near the check-in counters to get checked in on time. As they had reservations, they found the check-in kiosks and lined up to use these. They were checking in one-by-one, when the system stopped accepting any further check ins. Less than half of the 45-member group had their boarding passes with no recourse for the remainder. By the time the group had made it to the check-in counters, the Delta rep told them they were too late checking in and their seats had been given away. Consequently, the next available seats for them were on Tuesday (a full 3 days later!) and they were not entitled to any free vouchers for anything.

How is such a situation possible?

By: MrBadExample

MrBadExample — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 03:35:00 +0000

Well I’ll comment. NEVER in all of my years traveling have I witnessed such a uncaring attitude from a company.

You go to the company internal publications and you see the western half of the company having parties and cookouts while their coworkers in the east suffer with a balky non functioning reservations systems. Did Dougie tell ya that some Kiosks were down further delaying customers. Never once do you see the liars from US admit that little slice of heaven.

Or that their Res system won’t do rule 240 re-routes and they have to physically call other airlines and that the employees have been instructed NOT to honor their own Contract of Carriage as far as rule 240 is concerned.

Anyone who was caught up in this that doesn’t file a DOT complaint is being nothing more than a lamb being led to slaughter.