Posted on 03/18/2007 9:37:53 AM PDT by SamAdams76
Travel is getting better at Philadelphia International Airport. Flights are getting airborne and travelers are getting to their destinations. But U.S. Airways, the largest carrier at the airport, has been hit the hardest by this storm, and again had more problems Saturday night.
At 9 pm U.S. Airways was in a standstill after the airline's computer system crashed. Weary travelers tried to find refuge on baggage check in stations as baggage checkers just stood there and watched.
In the late morning Philadelphia International Airport contacted the airlines and notified them that they have extra gates, transportable gates, tarmac busses and other amenities for them if they needed to get their passengers off of stranded planes on the tarmac.
But it wasn't until 4:15pm that the airport says U.S. Airways notified them for assistance. U.S. Airways tells us they waited several hours to call for assistance because they were still hoping the planes would be able to take off. They tell us they were trying to get passengers to their destinations and didn't want to cancel things until absolutely necessary. Once ice started falling, thats when U.S. Airways called PIA.
However that is just one aspect of the nightmare that has been unfolding for travelers at PIA. At 3pm Friday the airport said they were 95 percent shut down to incoming and outgoing flights. The 5 percent were planes en route that had to land.
Hundreds were left stranded, resorting to an uncomfortable stay in the airport. The lucky ones were able to make arrangements, but getting to their hotels was a seemingly impossible task as well. Taxis were scarce. Hundreds of stranded travelers waited in the pounding sleet to catch one. One man said he had been waiting in line for two hours.
At 6 pm Saturday ticket lines were still long at U.S. Airways. Passengers had waited up to 6 hours to just get confirmed on a flight.
Jim Morris of Stockton Springs, Maine told us, "They don't give anyone any direction. Everyone is confused. They just wait in line ... you can wait in a line for hours and when you finally get up there, they say you're in the wrong line."
Elwood Williams and his wife are trying to get to Orlando for their 25th wedding anniversary. It's been 2 days now ... patience is running thin.
"You look out across here and there are about 40 ticket counters and about a third of them are occupied," said Williams.
U.S. Airways told Action News at least 10 flights were stranded on the tarmac for up to three hours. Travelers on those planes will get a full refund or a $400 voucher.
My day started at 4AM in Phoenix as I started to make the long trip back home after a business conference. My 7:30AM flight from Phoenix to Philadelphia on US Airways went reasonably well but as soon as it touched down in Philly at around 3PM local time, it went downhill in a hurry.
I knew something wasn't right as soon as the airplane taxied to the terminal. Before getting to the gates, it stopped. After about 10 minutes, the pilot announced that there was a "gate delay" and that we would need another 5-10 minutes before we could get in. Now I had a connecting US Airways flight I had to make at 3:55PM so I was starting to get nervous. But at 3:20, we finally move into the gate and the usual suspects jump out into the aisle to grab their humongous carry-ons. Stuck in the back the plane, I'm thinking it will take 15 minutes more to get off the plane but that's okay because that will still give me 20 minutes to get to the gate for my connecting flight and I'm a fast walker. So I stay calm.
But the doors never open! It's now 3:30 and the pilot announces that he has made two calls to the terminal to get somebody to move the gate to the plane so we can get off. But the terminal is shorthanded and we have to wait. It is not until 3:45 that the gate is maneuvered to the plane and people finally start getting off. At this point, I'm pretty much resigned to losing my connector flight to Manchester, NH so now I'm thinking it might be faster to rent a car and drive the six hours home.
But I get off the plane and see that my connecting flight has been delayed by one hour so I am relieved, even though the gate for some odd reason is on the other side of the airport which necessitates walking through three other terminals and then taking a shuttle bus and it is a miracle I got there because there were no obvious signs or helpful US Airways people to point me in the right direction.
One thing I noticed right off the bat is that wherever there was a US Airways booth, there were incredibly long lines and incredibly pissed off people waiting in them. People were sleeping on the floor and I was told that some of those people had been waiting in line to have their cancelled flights rescheduled from the night before!
I finally get to the gate where my connecting flight is to depart and there is mass confusion. There are no obvious signs at the gate telling me I am at the right flight and there are about 80 people standing in line to speak to the one US Airways employee in that entire gate area. I ask people in front of me if this is the right line for the Manchester flight and they just shrug because they have no clue themselves. My only hint that I'm at the right gate is because that gate is listed on the Departures video screen. Since I have a boarding pass for the flight anyway, I see no point in waiting in line so I take a walk up and down the terminal to cool off.
There is this one humongous line leading to the US Airways information booth which apparently is the line you have to stand in if you are one of the unfortunate souls who had your flight cancelled the night before due to the snow/ice storm. There were police officers on Segways attempting to maintain order as literally hundreds of people stood (but mostly sat and lied down) in a line that was not moving. Some of them were in tears and I heard one of them telling one of the Segway officers that they were being treated like prisoners. If they left the line to use the bathroom or get something to eat, they had to go to the back of the line unless they were lucky enough to have somebody to switch places for them.
What amazed me is that in the age of the cellphone and internet, there was apparently no way to get your flight rescheduled by phone or the web. You had to stand in that line.
When I got back to my gate, there were about 300 people standing around it looking to get on a plane that only seated 50. People who were ticketed and checked-in for the flight (like me) were getting no indication from US Air that we could just relax and wait for the boarding to be announced. Instead, we were made to feel that unless we were in the long line to speak to the lone, surly US Air lady, that our status was uncertain at best.
Finally some irritated looking US Air agent comes up to the gate and started announcing boarding for the flight. I come up with my boarding pass and all is well. Would have been nice if they put the flight information on the gate and made a few announcements to take the suspense out of everything.
So I get on the plane and have to wait about a half hour while the one lady inside processes those on standby to ensure a full flight. The plane finally takes off nearly two hours late and I get to New Hampshire at around 6:30PM.
I go to the baggage claim and the 50 passengers all crowd around it and with a flourish, some US Airways baggage handler comes out with about 7 bags and puts them on the belt. He doesn't even bother turning the belt on. He then says that this is it so far as baggage for the flight and the rest of us may wait in line to file a claim at the baggage office. He then disappears back into the hole he climbed out of and we never see him again.
Of course, my bag wasn't one of them. So I race to the baggage claim office where there are already about 30 people in front of me. Okay, only 30 people in front of me instead of hundreds. I can handle that.
But come to find out, there is only one person processing lost baggage claims and apparently it is a 15-20 minute process to file each claim. Absolutely no information is given to us in line. We hope we are in the right line. About half the people in front of me give up in disgust and still it is taking forever to get to the front of the line. I try getting through to US Airways on my cellphone and it is impossible. A recording tells me there is a 30-minute wait and I was waiting 55 minutes before the battery on my cellphone forced me to give up trying. I fire up my laptop (which I was fortunate to have carried on) and connect to US Airways on the Internet only to get absolutely no direction whatsoever. So the line I'm standing in is my only option. It is now close to 8PM and there are about 50 people behind me and about 10 people in front of me. A second US Airways employee goes into the baggage claim office to process lost baggage claims to loud cheers. But the process doesn't seem to go much faster.
Finally, around 8:45PM, I am ushered into the baggage claim office to file my claim. An an absurd display of incompetence, it takes the US Airways employee nearly 15 minutes to fat-finger into the antiquated computer system a few pieces of information that would have taken most of us about three or four minutes to input.
I finally get out of there with a promise from US Airways to deliver my luggage to my home IF it is ever found. And I was damn lucky, because as this article states, the entire computer system went down 15 minutes later.
I'm not much the complaining type but US Airways has got to be the worst run airline on the planet. I'm not complaining about the cancelled flights and the delays due to weather. That stuff happens. But to treat your customers like cattle is inexcusable. Not once during my day-long experience did a US Airways employee come out to the long lines to offer explanations or even just to let us know we were even in the right line! The few US Airways employees I did see acted like Soviet bureaucrats and wouldn't even deign to speak to us unless we stood in for hours in their interminable lines. And if we were in the wrong line to begin with, we had to just wait until we got to the front of it in order to find out.
Anyhow, as irritated as I am over the experience, I am one of the lucky ones. Whoever said the American people weren't patient? That US Airways officials can get through this weekend without being physically assaulted is a testament to the civility and timeless patience of the American people.
Southwest.
Sorry to hear of yor ordeal. I never made it to the airport. After waiting on hold for FOUR HOURS, the phone went CLICK (off) and I went to bed.
Sucks!
I have been there & done that. 8 years ago my family was on a Continental flight coming in to Newark from overseas (we attended my son's wedding). The flight was late so we missed our connecting flight to Detroit and had to spend the night in a hotel near the terminal. The next morning I was on the first flight out, for no other reason than I checked in WITH NO LUGGAGE leaving all the stuff with the rest of the family. From the airport I went straight to work.
Meanwhile my family was stuck in Newark for most of the day and did not get back to Detroit until that evening. Meanwhile they could use none of the food vouchers given to them by the airlines because there was no kosher food anywhere in the airport except for some pretzels and potato chips from the snack dispensers.
I have always wondered why no one has ever opened a kosher food concession at major airports like JFK, La Guardia, etc. THEY WOULD MAKE A FORTUNE.
The DMV of the sky!
Thing to worry about in Phila.:
Getting killed - No city action planned.
Things NOT to worry about in Phila.:
Eating trans fatty food. - City passed a law.
Not quite; they didn't want to retain "Agony Airlines" !!
LOL! I remember that nickname for them very well!
Sorry for your nightmarish experience. US Air is an utter disaster, and its Philadelphia employees are by far the worst. I avoid it if at all possible, although when you fly through PHL you often don't have another option.
ping
Man, that's a bummer story and you were one of the lucky ones. I don't mind flying US Air - as long as I don't fly out of PHL. If I can't fly direct or connect through CLT, I'll pay double to fly another airline.
You have my sympathies. I go out of my way not to fly USAir...and I do mean out of the way. But en toto, I have no doubt my self-imposed inconvenience is nothing compared to the net inconvenience with USAir, even if the USAir route would have been more direct. Of the flights I have had with them over the years, only a handful have been without incident.
But more than the incompetence is the institutional attitude toward the customer, which you very accurately describe as Soviet bureaucrat. It's as if they actually train their personnel to be disdainful of people, so consistent is the attitude.
I broke my own no-USAir rule a few weeks ago and was reminded why I instituted the rule in the first place.
I had a similar experience with Northwest airlines in Detroit when the airline employees were on strike. The difference was that there was no bad weather. Somehow the Northwest terminal at the Detroit airport was without electricity. They standed us in the dark for eight hours, without food, herding us like cattle all around the terminal, yelling at us if we didn't understand what they wanted us to do. We didn't find out until later that other parts of the airport had power.
But, the Philadelphia airport is always a problem. We waited forty five minutes for our baggage to start coming down the shute, the last time that I was there. A few bags came down and then the workers apparently took their dinner break. We were all complaining and the airlines couldn't rouse an answer from the workers. I think that they had to go and find them and bring them back to work.
As a former airline customer service employee (different airline), I usually roll my eyes at statements like yours resulting from these kinds of disruptions. Usually they come from people who have no idea what's going on; they're just frustrated. In this case, though, I entirely agree with you. They are an absolute basket case.
What amazed me is that in the age of the cellphone and internet, there was apparently no way to get your flight rescheduled by phone or the web.
Their telephone reservations people can do it, but they had hold times exceeding 4 hours the last couple days. Even now their hold times are in the 2 hour range, and then you end up talking to someone in the Philipines.
On another note, I heard a story from someone who was waiting in a long line yesterday to talk to a US Airways rep at the airport. Apparently the employees at the counter decided that they needed a break and proceeded to sit down - behind the counter - and read the newspaper with all those people standing in line. Mind-blowing.
There is a reason why they do what they do...they are frequent travelers and know they are hosed if the airline loses their bag.
>>> and the usual suspects jump out into the aisle to grab their humongous carry-ons.
When I got out of college I spent four years traveling all over the place, racking up 600k miles on Delta. I only needed to be burned once on a connection to start taking carry-on only.
The other tricks were always to book the first flight out of the airport to get back home. (Although one time I sleepily got on the wrong plane at 520am and ended up in Atlanta not Cincy.) I dont think I was ever caught up in one of these mass cancelled flight situations....back then when you had tight connections a gate agent met you at the gate and told you your next gate. One time I was told to follow someone and ended up in a golf cart in the snow on the tarmac in SLC!
Back then, if your flight was suddenly cancelled, you went back to the Crown Room or called the Crown Room members number to get on another plane. Now, back in the early 90s it was only $99/year rather than $400/year or whatever they are charging.
But in the late 90s, the airlines just started not caring anymore...
I fly Alaska to Seattle and Southwest to Phoenix and Vegas these days....
No offense, but dream on. Given the current attitudes of state, fed, etc. government today the Muslims would -- b/c they could -- have that place shut down in a heart beat. And, besides, knowing the "sensitivity" of Muslims to things Jewish you actually think the airport's insurance handlers would ever even allow a place like this?
Best airline I've ever flown. It was actually an enjoyable experience.
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