A choice between Delta and US Airways is no choice at all..both are a nightmare, but if I had to make such an iniquitous choice, avoiding Delta would be my first choice. CLT is not a bad airport for connections generally speaking. The whole issue of overbooking flights is iniquitous. It creates perverse incentives.
The airline is rewarded by being able to sell extra seats without having the compensate the passenger who is inconvenienced (especially if some tangental connection to the "weather" can be invented, you know, your flight was delayed from ATL to CLT because it is windy in Chicago).
Therefore, it is often in the airlines best interest to make the decision to "close up" the flight and sell off the remaining seats to standby's. This infuriates the customer, who is utterly powerless. This attitude towards customers is borne out of exemption from normal contract law embodied in the federal regulations. When the state Attorney Generals tried to get congress to give them the powers to apply normal contract law that applies to all other businesses to airlines, the airline lobby fought tooth and nail to prevent this. Why? Because they are not "de-regulated" in a normal market sense. The are legalised local monopolies who are protected from the normal laws and pressures and have carte blanche to abuse their customers.
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