[jtdidden]

This is a message I sent to USAir after my trip back. I have not gotten a response yet...

USAir,

When I left my hotel at 8:15am the flight was listed as on time. My suspicion is that you knew by 8:15am that the flight was going to be late.
At Cancun, I was told the flight was 1.5 hours late, but that the flight was in the air. Then later at the gate the same person tells me that there was an unscheduled landing due to weather in Charlotte. Your web site said that the plane had mechanical issues. I could not find any way to contact you from Mexico on your web site. A relative called and you were unable to tell him where the plane was! Once on the plane the aircrew states that they came direct from Philly. From my, the consumer’s perspective, regardless of what actually happened, it would appear that you have been incompetent and/or possibly dishonest. Also, in Cancun, they never made any announcements or updates about the flight status so we were left to feed on tidbits overheard from/by passengers.
We finally arrive in Philly at 8:45pm. The captain tells us that there are no gates open and no one is answering the phone! Then he says we’ll be docked in 30 minutes. We sit on the tarmac for ~2hrs waiting for a gate to open, and the pilot tells the story as basically blaming the airport. But there are US Airways planes with no people/activity sitting idly at gates. And when we finally do swing around into the dock area, we see there were 2 adjacent gates open the entire time! Now, it may be that US airways didn’t have the crew to move planes around, or that you don’t have enough gates leased at Philly, but there were definitely open “gates.” The pilot was completely idiotic by repeatedly and strongly assuring us that we would be in the gate quickly. If the pilot had said, “due to the storm we’re short on people and can’t move planes around between our assigned gates so we’re going to have to wait and I’m not sure how long,” it would have been far, far better.
Then we get to the baggage area and there people who have been waiting for hours for their luggage to be offloaded! We quickly glimpse our own fate. There were only 4 managers doing all of the unloading in our International terminal! I realize the snow messed things up, but you knew a strong winter storm was coming, and you knew the Eagles were playing, so there was ample opportunity to come to the not so difficult conclusion that you might need some extra help on stand by. While we landed around 8:45pm, we did not get our luggage until 2am, and it was just sitting waiting to be offloaded!
One bright spot was your Airline Rep, who was the only one the whole day who really spoke to us completely honestly and accurately, telling us what the situation was and that we were in for a long wait. Tell me the truth and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Yank me around and you’ll never see my dollars again. My hat off also to the attendants and those 4 managers who worked until the job was done.
You would think that given how you’re being investigated for the Christmas fiasco you’d be a bit more sensitive to some good customer service. I doubt I’ll be booking USAIR again soon.
In the next day or so, I’ll be posting to a couple of travel bulletin boards about my trip in general. I’m sending this to you first, because I’d like to include your response to my concerns, which I think is only fair to you. It was a bad enough experience that I’ll probably also voice my concerns to my DE Senators, Rep & the FAA about my tax dollars going to prop up USAir.

Disappointed,
Jason