America West FlightFund (Discontinued Program) - AWA late???

I fly America West often and last July, we were not late, we had two, not one, two flights totally cancelled on us. On our recent return they were two hours late due to no crew???? Late may be good compared to total non-flight. What an airline!!!!

Welcome to the club Marysunshine.

Not once, but three times in the past year I have boarded AW flights from Phoenix to LA and had the plane return to the gate due to mechanical problems. Two of the three were eventually canceled.

More often then not I could have driven between my home in Southern Arizona and LA in the same time as my America West flights.

I keep America West in mind to go to those business meetings that I want to miss.

Hang on to those America West Club passes, Marysunshine!

The stats for October are out...big surprise, AWA ranks last on-time performance, baggage handling and consumer complaints. 60% of flights on-time and 5% cancelled in October, and a complaint rate that is nearly 18 times higher than Southwest. I should point out that Southwest saw on-time performance drop to 7th/10 in October also...only about 71% on-time.

[This message has been edited by West Coast Flier (edited 12-16-2000).]

Really - what is it with this stinkin' airline???? I will go out on a limb to say they totally suck!!!

I am under the belief of two things regarding cancelled flights:

1. They do it often when the load factors are low, and have many other times to accomodate passengers on.

2. They really have a lot of mechanical problems due to the older fleet (737's) they have!

I had TWO flights cancelled this morning from LAS-SNA. The first, an appoximate 8am departure was obviously cancelled due to only 5 people showing up, and the 10:00 was cancelled I think for the same reason.

The 11:30 flight was delayed becuase the f/a's were taking their sweet ... time hauling themselves from their previous flight, so they delayed boarding until 11:30 (departure time).

When 11:30 finally rolled around, the flight was so jam packed, they announced at the gate that "Everyone would have to gate check their rollaboards". Being the first non f/c non elite in line (as the best aisle seat I could get was the LAST ROW!), the gate agent tried to gate check myself and the gentlemen after me, who was also bumped two times. What ensued was a very heated arguement that HP screwed us twice, and we didn't have time to wait another half hour for our bags becuase we were already going to be late for meetings! We both decided to rip off the gate check tags as we turned down the jetbride, and told the guy at the bottom that they were allowing us to bring ours on board!

Then, the FA's started .....ing to each other while camped out in the galley about "I thought nobody was supposed to be bringing rollaboards on!". Then the one that really got me was at 11:34 (departure time) when there were still people boarding, they announced on the PA "It is now 11:34, departure time. Please be seated as soon as possible so we can depart." I almost turned around and said "Well, look, if it wasn't for you taking so long to haul that big ... of yours over to our gate, maybe we could depart on time!"

I have had to travel to Vegas on business four times over the last two months, all on HP (as AA dropped the SNA-LAS route) and on FULL FARE tickets. Every time has had some delay or issue, and I HAVE HAD IT WITH HP. They treat their full fare pax like crap. I will fly on AA SNA-SJC-LAS from now on.

I'm still writing a nice letter to see if I can get some free stuff, of course!!! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

I'm really normally fairly tollerant of issues that airlines have, but it just seems like HP doesn't get it, and today was the one that broke the camel's back.

[This message has been edited by SNA_Flyer (edited 12-15-2000).]

I'm happy? to know everyone else on AWA loves it as much as I http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif. The only thing that brings a smile to my face is the quality of the FEW employees who have been wonderful to us; Glenda the supervisor in Las Vegas and Stephanie, a CS rep in Phoenix. I've told AWA they probably made a mistake hiring such good people. It's not like them.

Marysunshine:

America West's problems are not due to it's employees, but it's management!

The CS reps, FA's and ticket and gate agents didn't have any say in the decision a few years ago to fire 300 mechanics and outsource heavy maintainance, a major cause of todays operational problems.

Unfortunately it is the employees who have to endure abuse from the traveling public for problems beyond their control.

Another problem is the low pay scales, that creates a revolving door for entry level employees who get a few months of CS and computer experience and move on to better positions in the travel industry. At stations like LAX the inexperienced staff can barely handle the normal operations, and are overwhelmed by any service irregularity.

I was at LAX when the Air Traffic Control system went down last October, the TV news crews all headed for the America West ticket counter since it had the biggest crowd of angry travelers!

Just thought that I'd add:

America West used to have one of the best baggage handling ratings in the airline industry, until management decided to exclude ramp workers from the annual profit sharing bonus last year since they voted for union representation.

I remember watching from the America West Club (during one of my recent delays) several bags falling from a moving cart onto the tarmac, the bags were laying out there for about 15 minutes. Must have been 10 or 15 baggage carts drove past without stopping! They were there until they were moved aside when a plane had to push back.

This year all the employees get coal in their stockings, the reason.....high fuel costs!


[This message has been edited by Old Gold (edited 12-17-2000).]