US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - Multiple Flight Cancellations and Equipment Changes

Can anyone speak to why US Airways has been cancelling so many flights, and changing equipment on so many flights. I have been primarily looking at flights between BWI, and have seen multiple A320s subing for A321 service, same for the 737 filling in for the 757. Also have been concerned about quite a few cancellations over the past 5 days. I wouldn't think that weather would be an issue.

weather has MOST CERTAINLY been a vital issue for nearly every domestic carrier (save Aloha and Hawaiian, perhaps) this week. PHL/DCA/BWI/LGA/JFK/EWR have all been miserable for most of Tues and Wed and LGA was nearly at a standstill for most all of yesterday, along with EWR.

Add to that the thundershowers over the midwest, and things were teetering a little out of control for many of us. I got stuck in LGA yesterday and ultimately left after 10 hours of delays for my flight.

If you've been watching activities and equip swaps over the past week, that's why. Way too many aircraft out there trapped at airports with ground stops forces ANY airline to reutilize aircraft as best they can. Things should be back to "normal" going into this weekend.

I wouldn't think that weather would be an issue.
I'm not sure I have ever seen this many wide spread thunderstorms (http://www.intellicast.com/Local/USNationalWide.asp?loc=usa&seg=LocalWeather&prodgrp=RadarImagery&product=RadarLoop&prodnav=none)

Glad I'm not flying tonight or tomorrow

Ugh. The Midatlantic is going to be a mess for the morning banks.

weather has MOST CERTAINLY been a vital issue for nearly every domestic carrier (save Aloha and Hawaiian, perhaps) this week. PHL/DCA/BWI/LGA/JFK/EWR have all been miserable for most of Tues and Wed and LGA was nearly at a standstill for most all of yesterday, along with EWR.

Add to that the thundershowers over the midwest, and things were teetering a little out of control for many of us. I got stuck in LGA yesterday and ultimately left after 10 hours of delays for my flight.

If you've been watching activities and equip swaps over the past week, that's why. Way too many aircraft out there trapped at airports with ground stops forces ANY airline to reutilize aircraft as best they can. Things should be back to "normal" going into this weekend.

I experienced it first hand in PHL last night - multiple cancellations without a drop of rain hitting the tarmac... ultimately I decided to rent a car and drive home. So much for that $900 ticket for a 1 day r/t flight. Absolutely no help at all from any of the staff, but what can you expect for the F terminal. I really loved it when the guy at the club gave me a clueless look and told me to go to special services, which of course was not staffed. Special services? After 5pm on a summer weekday in Philly? Why would we need to staff that?

Sigh. The thing that really burns my biscuits is that US will keep trumpeting "not our fault, weather... faa..." when in fact this was directly related to their stupid decision to de-hub PIT. Centralizing flights to an airport with already poor services and zero excess capacity and this is what you get.

I experienced it first hand in PHL last night - multiple cancellations without a drop of rain hitting the tarmac... ultimately I decided to rent a car and drive home. So much for that $900 ticket for a 1 day r/t flight. Absolutely no help at all from any of the staff, but what can you expect for the F terminal. I really loved it when the guy at the club gave me a clueless look and told me to go to special services, which of course was not staffed. Special services? After 5pm on a summer weekday in Philly? Why would we need to staff that?

Sigh. The thing that really burns my biscuits is that US will keep trumpeting "not our fault, weather... faa..." when in fact this was directly related to their stupid decision to de-hub PIT. Centralizing flights to an airport with already poor services and zero excess capacity and this is what you get.

Most of the flights that I looked at yesterday were before the rain started. A lot around the 1pm and 2pm period.

I am flying them in a couple of weeks, and I never seem to have good luck, so this isn't a good sign. I have had everything from a flight being cancelled for failing a FAA Ramp Check, to me being stuck in MCI for a night. I missed the connection in MCI by 1 minute, bc the flight from CLT was delayed for maintenance. The B1900 left with only 1 passenger (18 of us were on the CLT flight), although I am hoping that it was because of duty time rules.

Let's hope everything is better in a couple of weeks.

the weather has been a mess again 7/15. did 3 legs today. bdl-phl noon on time. friend called re: phl-rdu 4p delayed 1.5h. mom called re: rdu-phl some flights before 6p cancelled, most delayed, her's 2h delay ~7:30. i flew bdl-clt 9p 1h delay. flight landed (don't know where from), deplaned, turned around in record time, took off in a monsoon. kenny mayne (espn) spotted with worse luck, bdl-dca cancelled. luckily connection clt-rdu ~11p equally delayed (from indy). same story, arrived late, spun around loaded to the hilt, 1.5h total delay. FA/GA all helpful. looking around, a lot of people worse off than I. crewman next to me on last leg was going to rdu b/c all flights from clt to phl full up this am (7/16), while rdu had 1 jump seat. he's trying to get to work, so pilots are getting stuck too. good luck everyone. pardon my non-caps. long day, i'm sleepy.

I had a similar experience. Flight from HVN to PHL delayed 3+ Hours, plus an extra 30 minutes waiting for a gate in F to open up around 10PM.

PHL is worse than it's ever been this summer. The kinds of weather/atc delays we are now seeing are a prime reason why flights/personnel need to be deployed to PIT on the double. But of course, CCY has a hard on for PHL and they will want to spend millions on baggage delivery and endure major collateral damage due to angry customers.

:mad:

... CCY has a hard on for PHL and they will want to spend millions on baggage delivery and endure major collateral damage due to angry customers...

PIT is no answer to what turns PHL into a nightmare with bad weather. US has invested big bucks in the A West international terminal as well as making PHL a domestic hub. There's no other way to go plain and simple.

As to angry customers, what is one to do with bad weather and all of the collorary issues that go with it? These problems run up and down the east coast during the summer. Sometimes a specific region lucks out and things go better than usual, but usually the whole region takes it on the chin.

We're coming in from MAD tomorrow and we're crossing our fingers that the weather gods are kind to us tomorrow.

Barry

Just flew in from PHL and there were multi-hour delays all over the place and cancellations. Weather was blamed. Lots at the F terminal.

... CCY has a hard on for PHL and they will want to spend millions on baggage delivery and endure major collateral damage due to angry customers...

PIT is no answer to what turns PHL into a nightmare with bad weather. US has invested big bucks in the A West international terminal as well as making PHL a domestic hub. There's no other way to go plain and simple.

As to angry customers, what is one to do with bad weather and all of the collorary issues that go with it? These problems run up and down the east coast during the summer. Sometimes a specific region lucks out and things go better than usual, but usually the whole region takes it on the chin.

We're coming in from MAD tomorrow and we're crossing our fingers that the weather gods are kind to us tomorrow.

Barry

I'm not willing to give management a free pass on this... yes I can understand that there might be some perceived economic benefit to centralizing into PHL, but the fact is that PIT had a nice capacity cushion and smooth ops whereas PHL didn't. If you've scheduled yourself to run max numbers of takeoffs and landings per hour for a long period of time, your ability to adapt to a ground stop or other delays becomes dramatically diminished. PIT had a better ratio of flights to capacity so their ability to deal with these kinds of issues was much better. Not perfect, but better. Sure, east coast thunderstoms and air traffic issues would still cause delays thu PIT. But it wouldn't result in mass cancellations like we've been seeing at PHL. CCY gets plausible deniability because they can point to hurricane Dennis and the FAA... but in reality their decision to de-hub PIT played a major role and they know it.