I have a $646.19 credit for a flight. I want to use my $646.19 credit towards a new flight that only cost $300. I was told that I would be stuck with a $150 change fee but my credit was large enough to cover that. US Airways now wants me to pay an additional $150 on a credit card and forfiet the remaining balance. How does that make sense? A $300 flight is now going to cost $800.

Now I know why I prefer to fly Southwest.

Now that Southwest has implemented the new boarding procedure, I find them a fantastic way to fly–boarding is now orderly (and rewards people who are OCD and check in exactly 24 hours before boarding), you get free drinks, free checked baggage, large overhead bins (unlike on the US Airways Embraer “jets”), and plenty of legroom.

I was Gold on American, and haven’t flown them in a year because I was treated poorly in Miami. If it weren’t for the lower upfront fares, I would never fly US Airways again.

Last Friday, I was scheduled for an early AM out and back the next day trip. Due to a mechanical, they canceled the flight after they boarded up and collected Boarding passes. Rather than wait until they got around to reaccomodating everyone, I called the airline Premium flier service center and canceled my trip – basically since I would have missed my meeting and traveled to a city for no reason.

USAir was timely and professional and took my info and told me that they had canceled my trip and refunded my money. I then received an email telling me my cancellation request had been denied. When I called them I was told that because I used a portion of my ticket, the entire ticket was non-refundable. The portion that I ‘used’ was the canceled flight.

This of course required another phone call – and this time I was sent to the ‘refunds desk’ where they tried to convince me that I flew on a flight that they canceled. I asked the woman to check the flight history. She did. She said it was canceled. I asked her how I could have used a flight coupon for a canceled flight. She told me to standby. Yet another person came on who needed to needed the story explained to them – and they tried to tell me that ‘the system indicated that I had used one of my flight coupons.’ I again sai: “on a canceled flight? How is that possible?”

“Please stand by sir.’ she comes back and transfers me to the director of revenue accounting for that office. We again go through the dance and she finally says, ‘Sir, you must have flown that day, the computer says so.’ I said ‘ma’am, does that make any sense? USAir canceled by originating flight to one of your hubs – how could I only travel there after misconnecting with my other 2 flights = plus there is no return. Commons sense tells you what happened here.”

“Please wait sir.”
‘
She transfers me to ‘Special Refunds’ who looks at the record and tells me “no problem, I have refunded your fare. Only this department has the authority to refund when a boarding passes have been collected and entered since we can verifiy that the flight never leeft the ground.”

I did not even ask any other questions except to get her first name, employee number and direct dial.

Like Chris says, they have lots of ways to take your money, but only one way to give it back and its never easy.

It’s highway robbery for someone to have to pay $2 for water

With fuel prices at a reasonable level now, why are we not seeing these measures being reversed ?

I, too, have been upgraded over 90% of my flights this year as Platinum. But it is NOT just about the upgrades. And as Anita mentioned above, the only difference these days between coach and first class is a larger seat, a snack basket, and free drinks. I am a short-haul flier and the loss of the 500-mile minimum and Preferred bonus miles HURT. Furthermore, the product and service remain inconsistent.

They should offer elite benefits to their partner airline elites, or they will lose even more of us. My husband swore off USAir more than a year ago. I refuse to reward them for treating me badly.

I recently saw an airline survey that asked if I would pay extra to get my bag in the first cart off the plane, to select a seat, or to reserve space in the bin for a carry-on bag, among other things. NO NO NO. I expect service, not new fees. USAir doesn’t understand this.

Their cuts to the miles earned was too much, I can put up with the staff, the planes, but changing it from a free flight every 5 weeks to a free flight every 12 based on my travel level – that was more than enough to stop me.

The best this year was Sheraton – a $75 “early departure fee” when I had a death in the family, there goes 200 room nights from me alone at their La Jolla location.

The problem is that they’re blind, incompetent and comparing apples and pears.

Airlines have wined for years about administration costs and customer-processing rates (i.e. the time it takes them to check you in). Then why are they introducing all these new fees that take administration, and extra time to check in?

And worst of all: Why do they keep lying to their customers and personnel, even though it obvious that nobody believes them?

Time to pull the plug on these folks. But I bet they’re watching GM and Ford, and preparing to be next in line for some extra government money.

Simply put, since US Airways changed frequent flier mileage accural — I am losing out big time.

Doug Parker and Scott Kirby are smoking weed thinking frequent flier members would rather get upgraded to First Class rather than accuring bonus miles. I do get upgraded most of the time, but they offer nothing other than a ‘free drink’ and a very boring snack basket full of junk.

If US Airways changed their myopic view of mileage I’d stay and keep the credit cards. In this day and age flying is a chore and you might as well get the most miles for your misery.

Later,
Anita :)

Q1: No, we don’t evaluate competing products because we know they’re better. We just ask if people like the changes we’ve made to our own, because if we improve anything, they’ll have to say they like us in the survey and then we can pretend we’re competitive.

Q2: We don’t know the point where people cry uncle and just give up on us, but we’re trying hard to find it and paying people a lot of money to find it.

Q3: We don’t really offer a different product than Southwest, but we shall keep our heads in the sand and not try and operate like the only profitable US airline. We don’t think it’s a good idea to have a simple price structure so that customers and employees can figure out when to buy tickets or what a good price is, nor do we want our employees to treat our customers like people, because people will only come back again and again. Who wants that hassle when we can swim in our empty bank vault like Scrooge McDuck, except that it’s empty of cash?

Q4: No idea – we don’t have the cash to buy into other destinations.

Q5: Did we mention we don’t have cash and can’t get credit?

Q6: We don’t know how to add an extra column keyed to a customer name to our lousy booking database so that we can make it easy for us to make money (see our too many rate planners strategy as proof), but we’re trying to find someone who does know.