Oh please, its amazing how US Air has you guys so beaten up , you rise to their defense like a battered wife. And the reason why my post was so long, I have seen numerous examples of a person posting an account and having to endure so many responses ("somtehing is missing in your story, what happened next? blah blah").
As far as my sis should have known better because of her gold stauts, she got it because she flies long international trips a few times a year. She hasn't flown US Air that often.
So all told, the original flight was about an hour late? As always, it's the passengers option to take an offered reroute, stick with the original plan (assuming that a cancellation desn't happen), or arrange their own alternate and get a refund. Those are the only options that US is required to give you so you're due nothing for the delay.
I have a different philosophy. If it is caused bby the airline's mistakes, then yes, they should owe us something. Because we all accept this crap is th reason why some airlines feel free to charge us for every change we make, but feel no obligation to do the reverse. And where did you get the idea that my sister had a choice as to stay or not? No one was given the option to stay on the plane. And later, the PHX thing was discouraged by my sis because she owuld land in Mexico City after 11pm and she did not feel comfortable going that late with a 10 hour delay caused by US Air's own mistakes. ONCE AGAIN, LET ME MAKE IT CLEAR SINCE IT CAN GET LOST IN A LONG POST - THIS RANT WAS NOT FUELED BY THE ORIGINAL FLIGHT HAVING A DELAY. It was provided as context since there are other threads talking about Philly and weather and I wanted to make it clear that htis chain of events started not because of the weather problems a lot of airlines are having this week. If the only option was PHX , but everything would hav ebeen handled with clarity, you would sitll have an unhappy woman, but you would have been spared my long rant.
My anger is about the baggage confusion, the way things just seem to be handled after they deplaned. As far as the poster who said we messed up things by interfering. What the hell do you expect when we keep getting VAGUE ANSWERS from different reps. All they would repeat is the baggage will be there when you get there and you wont have a problem waiting, why do you doubt our word or htey would say they dont know but would not bother following up with someone who did know. So do you blame us for trying to be proactive . yes my sis was not happy with Aeromexico's atlanta staff . But guess what, Aeromexico(via Delta) was doing US Air a favor of sorts. US Air should at least know what happens to a passengers luggage until it goes to Aeromexico. By my calls, it seems no one seemed to give the right idea and tell my sis it would be stuck in CLT. If the bags were stuck in CLT, it was clearly because of some rule that these US Air reps clearly didnt know about. Why don't they havee a clear rule on handling unattended baggage? Either send it to MEX on the original CLT-MEX flight and inform my sis about it or just reroute it so Aeromexico can take care of it. You seriously think it is acceptable for a US Airways rep who just got a passenger off the airline that took off minutes later to say "Oh, I dont know what the deal with your baggage will be?" How about explaining how Aeromexico should take responsibility and how to ask them to make a claim just lke someone on this thread did? If someone here can say that, why cant a trained US Air rep do that? I had t ofind that out by going to the local US Air desk in Mexico City. SOmething my sis wouldnt know because the desk would have been closed by the time she got here.
And what is unreasonalbe about expecting a goodwill gesture. she actually paid 50 bucks more for the traveling as a gold member with the upgrade perks on US Air than a comparable schedule on AA for this trip. She is not asking to be advanced for free every single time she books a different flight. I have had other airlines upgrade me for lesser inconveniences or advance me without my having to pitch a fit. In my whole life, I have encountered only three unreasonable instances - two by United and one by this. Still, is it unreasonable to ask for a mere advancement of a flight by 2 hours considering they wasted a lot more time of my sister's just on account of the baggage confusion? Trading time wasted for time gained is unreasonable? When airlines nickel and dime passengers for every change, why shouldn't a passenger expect some limited reciprocity by an airline that does the reverse due to a fault of their own.
We don't expect perfection. But considering airlines make money on baggage and we live in a TSA world where we can't even take freaking liquids, it is laughable how bad the tracking of luggage is in this day and age. (many examples from other airlines too but at least they had enough sense to admit a mistake in my experience).