[fcamille@juno.com]

We made the mistake of booking our roundtrip flights from Detroit to Dublin, Ireland on U S Airways. We had never flown on this airline before and only did so at the recommendation of our travel agent. If we have a choice, we will never fly on this airline again. Both of our flights between Detroit and Philadelphia were either delayed or cancelled or both.

Our flight 3136 from Detroit to Philadelphia on May 23, 2012 was supposed to take off at 4:26pm. We arrived at the airport more than two hours early as recommended by our travel agent. When we arrived at the gate we learned that the earlier flight from Detroit to Philadelphia was delayed. As the afternoon progressed we noticed that both the early afternoon flight and ours were both delayed. The offiical word from the airline was that there was a storm in Philadelphia that was delaying all flights into and out of Philadelphia and that we should not worry about missing our next flight because all departures from Philadelphia were running late. Curiously one of our fellow passengers who lived in Philadelphia called his wife to advise her he would be arriving late and was told by his wife that there had been no storm that day and that the sun was shining. We didn't take off until after 6pm. When we arrived in Philadelphia, the pilot announced that there would be a cart to transport passengers to other terminals if they were in danger of misisng thier next flight. When we got into the terminal there was no cart, so we started walking to our next gate which was in a different concourse. As we were walking, we heard the last call announcement for boarding for our flight to Dublin. We had to run the rest of the way and just made it on board before they closed the door.

Our return home from Dublin on June 1 started out uneventful. Our flight from Dublin to Phil was pretty much on time and we arrived more than 2 hours before our flight from Detroit was scheduled to leave at 3:19pm. When we first checked the screen in Philadelphia, our flight 3172 was showing as on time. As we sat at the gate we watched our plane being gased up and the luggage being loaded. Right around the time we should have been boarding, we heard an announcement that our flight was being delayed while they waited for our pilot to arrive from Indianapolis. We assumed the pilot was flying another plane from Indianapolis. Subsequently we heard another two announcements with the same information. Our departure time kept getting backed up, first to 5pm and then to 6 pm.

Around 6pm we heard another announcement that our flight had been cancelled. Everyone at the gate scrambled into line to reschedule. From what I could overhear all of us were rescheduled for the last flight of the day at 8:30pm. There were three people in our party: my wife and I and my wife's sister. When our turn came up to be rebooked, we were told our only option was to rebook on the last flight of the day even though there was another flight in between that had not taken off yet. My wife and i were given two seats together (8B and 8C), but my sister in law was assigned a seat in row 20. When I asked what happened to the pilot flying in from Indianapolis, the agent said he was a passenger on the flight and that the flight was canceled. We asked about meal vouchers since we would now have to eat dinner in Phil. We were told by the agent that she had no authority to issue meal vouchers; only customer service could do that. When we asked at the customer service desk about the voucher, the surly customer service agent replied that the airline stopped issusing meal vouchers several years ago and that there was nothing she could do for us. Once we were seated on the last flight of the day, my wife and I noticed that there were several empty seats right aound us that our traveling companion could have sat in. Two of them (8A and 8D) were in the same row we were sitting in and 9C was right in front of my wife's seat.

I think the airline did not want to fly two partially filled planes to Detroit that day. Philadelphia is a hub for this airline. I can't believe they would not have had a relief pilot to take over flight 3172. Posted schedules mean nothing to U S Airways. And lying to their customers seems to be standard operating procedure. None of the employees we encountered on the planes or at the airport were friendly or seemed to appreciate our business. You would expect that on one of the cut rate budget airlines, but not when you are paying full price for a ticket.