Someone needs to tell US about this.

I did a recent DONE5 trip through the USA which had a number of US Airways sectors and bought a series of connecting flights on US Airways on separate tickets, so that the trip I was planning on particular day was a DONE5 segment meeting an additional separate ticket, and did this at both PHX and CLT (as the connecting points).

I showed the US Airways staff a number of times when trying to do this, and requested that I and my bags be through-checked to my final destination. In all occasions, US Airways staff refused to check the bags through, initially telling me that I had to exit the secure area to collect my bags in PHX or CLT and then check them through again. I did this once (it was a disaster - a three hour transit ended up with me almost missing the plane because of massive lines and US Airways' lack of priority access for OWEs), and then managed to convince check in agents that they actually could through check - with a little bit of persistence, I found they did.

However, US' policy is no through-check for passengers holding separate tickets for connecting flights. It's a nightmare.

It's was a massive contrast to the rest of the alliance, where by and large I've found they were pretty good at throughchecking, etc.

I hope US Airways goes more the way of AA, rather than AA goes the way of US Airways.