US Airways is not my first choice to fly on because of our experience this past February. It was our first trip to WDW and we decided to drive from Ottawa to Syracuse, NY because it was cheaper. US Airways was the cheapest flight we had found and we were excited to save a ton of money versus fly straight out of Ottawa. So the flight out of Syracuse left almost 15 minutes late for no apparent reason (all the seats on the plane had bodies in them and no announcement was made as to why we were still sitting at the gate. Keep in mind our flight was scheduled to leave at 7am.) We were supposed to have a 50 minute layover in Charlotte, NC and then on to Orlando. We thought that since the flight from Syracuse left late the pilot would "make up the time in-flight" as we have previously experienced with other carriers. The time was not made up. Instead, we arrived in Charlotte with less than 20 minutes to literally RUN from one end of one concourse to the complete end of a totally separate concourse. My husband and I, along with one other couple who were on our flight, barely made it on the plane before it was "supposedly" scheduled to take off.. So we're sitting on the plane, catching our breath, and amazed that we made it on with only minutes to spare. So we sat. And we sat. almost 25 minutes later and the doors are now being shut. We expected that the good thing about waiting would at least be that our luggage made it on the plane from the previous flight. Need I even tell you what happened? Because, I think you KNOW where it's going. We arrive in Orlando 1 hour later than we are originally supposed to be there and NONE of our luggage made it on the plane. So here we are talking to an agent about our missing luggage and it is 2pm. She tells us that our luggage will be on a flight that arrives at 3pm but they won't be delivered to our hotel until about 6:30pm. We're not happy but we say okay. To make a long story short, at 9pm we were STILL waiting for our luggage to be delivered. We had to call a dozen times over 2 hours (after 9pm) and US Airways was not helpful in the least. This was our first experience with them AND with our luggage not being where it is supposed to or WHEN it is supposed to. This was also our peek at how airlines contract out delivery of luggage. That's right, not even a rep from US Airways was delivering our luggage. It was just Mr. Smith with a little Toyota pickup truck. This whole nightmare didn't end until 12:30am, that's right I said AM, when our luggage was FINALLY delivered. I hated US Airways for weeks afterwards, told everyone I know not to fly them. The sick part of it is . . . as much as I didn't want to, I made a reservation with them for January 2007. When I checked for flights, no one even came close in price. This time we're flying directly out of Ottawa, though . . . and hell if I haven't learned my lesson about carrying on changes of clothing and toiletries. We sure as hades are doing it in January!
