NBC 10 in Philly reporting lots of cancellations, due to wx tonight (Thursday).
But besides the usual tearful passengers waiting in the huge lines, many comments about US not giving out any information.

Airport is providing food, cots, etc. as it looks like many pax will be sleeping at the airport tonight.:(

Channel 6 had it as their lead story. The usual shots of angry passengers swearing they'll never fly USAirways again and saying that you need to include extra days when booking on USAirways to account for the delays. Supposedly US canceled 130 flights out of PHL and 530 nationwide.

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=traffic&id=5545425

(They call PHL "PIA" in the article. Thats what you get with today's journalists)

There was a thread at USAVIATION...apparently they are short staffed today...bags werent going anywhere in CLT...fatigued ramp workers and delayed flights+cancellations systemwide...

Sucks to be an US Employee/Passenger right now.

Drives me nuts that it is US's fault (or any other airline, for that matter) that there are thunderstorms and subsequent flight cancellations.

It was close to 100 degrees in the Philly area from Tues-Thurs, and today is supposed to be 82. There is really only one way for the temp to drop like that....a "cold" front coming in- which only means trouble thunderstorm-wise. Welcome to the drastic weather changes that we encounter in the Philly area. Winter lows around zero or lower (at times) with snow, summer highs around 100 (again, at times) with high humidity and afternoon thunderstorms.

On the radio this morning they said that there were 35 incoming flights that had already cancelled today......

Drives me nuts that it is US's fault (or any other airline, for that matter) that there are thunderstorms and subsequent flight cancellations.

It was close to 100 degrees in the Philly area from Tues-Thurs, and today is supposed to be 82. There is really only one way for the temp to drop like that....a "cold" front coming in- which only means trouble thunderstorm-wise. Welcome to the drastic weather changes that we encounter in the Philly area. Winter lows around zero or lower (at times) with snow, summer highs around 100 (again, at times) with high humidity and afternoon thunderstorms.

On the radio this morning they said that there were 35 incoming flights that had already cancelled today......


I agree. While US certainly needs to be held responsible for how they manage in the irregular ops and how they communicate with pax, they can't be held responsible for the summer weather. I had to change my usual route to work twice this morning because of trees down across the road. We had serious weather in PHL last night.

I agree that USAirways can't control the weather, but given the fact that they have been operating out of Phila for quite some time and have chosen to use it as a key hub, they could do a better job of crisis planning and response. I have been flying USAirways since the early 80s up and down the east coast and have connected in Phil or originated in Phil hundreds of times, so I am pretty well acquainted with what goes on there.

I was in the mess yesterday. Arrived at 5:00 PM for a 6:20 PM flight to RDU and since I drove through a storm on the way to the airport, I assumed there would be delays. Breezed through preferred security line in Terminal C and saw the monitors were already showing an 8:00 PM departure for my flight. Headed over to B14 to make sure the gate had the same info. The line for the Special Services Desk at the end of B was all the way down the hall to where it turns and ramps up to the rest of B concourse, and there was a mob around every gate that had an airline employee at it. Heard rumblings about people just coming back off a plane that had been sitting on the ramp for 6 hours, which means they boarded at about noon.

Headed back out to the Independence Brew Pub for a couple pints of IPA - I knew I would need it before the night was over. Back out to the gate. I was suspicious because it looked like a E-170 parked at B14 and we were supposed to be a 737. Sure enough, at 7:45 they announced a gate change to A-15, so we got to do the long trek over to the international concourse. At A-15, there is a plane parked short of the jetway and not connected, and no gate agent. After a while, a crew shows up and stands around for a while cause there is no gate agent and the plane has not been fueled or catered. Meanwhile, the departure time on the signs gets rolled ahead every half hour or so. At about 9:00 AM we get a gate agent and she boards us at 9:30. Plane takes off at 10:15, four hours late (but hey - it took off!).

Land at RDU at about 11:15. All US gates are occupied (a plane that had diverted from somewhere had parked at our gate). We wait 15 minutes while ground crew moved planes around to get us to a jetway. We pull up to the jetway. No one moves it to the plane. Wait 5 more minutes and one of the ramp guys finally comes up and moves the jetway. I walk off the plane at 11:40 PM, about 6 hours after entering the PHL airport. As I enter the terminal, a gate agent is announcing to the crowd from the diverted flight "you will have to all call the reservation line to be rebooked on a flight for tomorrow". I beat feet for the parking garage so I wouldn't get swept up by the angry mob.

So - my thoughts. Yeah weather was bad, but I think that the USAirways personnel and staffing policies have created a situation that makes a bad situation even worse.

Agreed, but it is not just US, and not just PHL. I was on Virgin last month out of JFK. I was on the 7:15am flight to LHR. Left the hotel at 4:30am and checked the Virgin website. It said the flight was ontime. Got to the airport to mass chaos. Turns out the flight didn't push back from the gate until 11pm....a 16 hour delay!

And to make matters worse, no Virgin rep told anyone in the queue waht was going on. We were standing in line by 5am. Finally got to an agent at 10am, and was told to get re-routed, we had to go stand in another queue. By 11:30, we were re-routed on Aer Lingus the following day. Decided to call Aer Lingus to verify, only to be told the flight we were supposedly on was sold out and only 2 of the 4 in our party were on the flight. Back to the re-routing queue.

By 2pm, we finally got up front again. The agent takes us over to Aer Lingus and gets us on the flight the following day. The Virgin agent says there are no hotel vouchers. While in line for Aer Lingus (we were told to stand in the check-in queue to get our tickets for the following day), we decide to book a hotel for that night. Since it was for that night, it was non-cancellable (? is that even a word?). We finally get up to an agent at 4pm (11 hours in various queues!:mad:) only to be asked why we were checking in for a flight the following day. I ask for a supervisor, who finds us seats on the flight that leaves in an hour.

So we try to cancel the hotel, no dice. No refund from Virgin when I complained. To complicate things, when we went to return from LHR and checked in with Virgin, we were told that our res was cancelled because we didn't take the first leg of our flight. They had no record of the Aer Lingus re-routing.

My point is that it is all airlines, and all airports that have these issues.

Apparently, people were stuck 6+ hours on US a/c. Not fun.

They call PHL "PIA" in the article. Thats what you get with today's journalists)

Darn editors forgot the "T" ;)

Well, we all know the drill: a gazillion O&D passengers in the Philly metro area, nobody wants to connect or think it's beneath them...yeah...US ain't goin' anywhere where PHL is concerned. :)

So - my thoughts. Yeah weather was bad, but I think that the USAirways personnel and staffing policies have created a situation that makes a bad situation even worse.

On the Philly news tonight (ABC), they interviewed a few stranded passengers. The main gripe - lack of communication, and lack of agents to help out. I can understand weather crippling operations, but c'mon, at least let everyone know what's going on, so they can make alternative arrangements if necessary.

On the Philly news tonight (ABC), they interviewed a few stranded passengers. The main gripe - lack of communication, and lack of agents to help out. I can understand weather crippling operations, but c'mon, at least let everyone know what's going on, so they can make alternative arrangements if necessary.

I watched the clip on wpvi.com. To be honest, you could substitute the words "US Airways" and "Philadelphia" on that piece with any airline/city in the USA.

Plus, when was the last time you saw Action News cover anything remotely positive about US Air (ok, when was the last time anything positive actually happened with US?)

Crown jewel. Enjoy the PHL connections. Plan a vacation around them, and just plan on getting a "free stopover."

Crown jewel. Enjoy the PHL connections. Plan a vacation around them, and just plan on getting a "free stopover."

You mean a forced stopover on an intl itin where you are allowed one free stopover? ;)

. . . Drives me nuts that it is US's fault (or any other airline, for that matter) that there are thunderstorms and subsequent flight cancellations. . .
Well, there were several things in play yesterday. Bad weather elsewhere causes many of the flt cx at PHL. In terms of PHL itself, there were no thunderstorms. There was a haze and a low ceiling causing departure delays as well ( my wife gets caught in one of those ).

Apparantly another problem at PHL is that one of the runways was scheduled to be closed at noon so they could paint it. Now I don't get who the fool is who decides to paint a runway in the summer on a Friday when air traffic is intense. Summer weather is always gonna be iffy and the entire airport can come to a crawl. But then again, there's something very Philadelphia to this sort of stupidity ( also explains why I'm a Steelers fan no matter what ).

So yes, US is not exactly responsible for yesterday's cancellations. but you know what? You reap what you sow and Tempe has so needlessly and so arrogantly screwed pax over so many times in the past, that as a pax you run out of goodwill. I'm not gonna justify that attitude as indeed it does not speak to the real cause of yesterday's woes. I am curious however as to how forthcoming frontline employees were to pax yesterday. Little things do count.

Then again, little things lead to unlikely revolts -- wasn't it bread in 1787 Paris? US has asked for it. Rant on angry masses. Show US no quarter. Tempe's not gonna hear you as they've stopped listening to the customer ages ago. There is however a utility to keeping these clowns in Tempe in the media spotlight as sooner or later they're gonna have to act and execute like a management team and put a product out there which works. Satisfied customers will most usually forgive weather delays when you have an otherwise consistent product.

Barry