US Airways sees more delays for today
The airline said most glitches with its new reservation system had been fixed. Passengers are urged to check in online and arrive early.
US Airways says it has solved most of the problems with a new computer reservations system, but passengers may still experience long lines and delays today as the airline works to fix bugs in its self-service ticketing kiosks.
The airline did not have all of its kiosks tied into the new system by late yesterday, and there was no estimate when they would be patched in, US Airways officials said.
Yesterday, that forced hundreds of passengers at Philadelphia International Airport to stand in long lines to check in with customer-service agents unless they had been able to check in online.
Just before 11:30 a.m., three friends from Bensalem, Lisa Boyd, Christine Bremner and Sophie Mielnick were wondering if they would start their fun getaway to Las Vegas by the end of the day. They had been at the airport's B-C ticket counter since 7:15 a.m., where they said they were moved from one line to another and given conflicting information by different US Airways employees.
"There was nobody we could talk to, and if you do talk to them, they're rude," Boyd said. "They keep starting new lines."
Other passengers told similar stories, waiting in lines that barely moved for two or three hours.
At the same time, several customers at the airport and others who e-mailed comments said they breezed through the process - provided they had been able to check in online before going to the airport.
Stuart Gelfond, a US Airways frequent flier from Glen Mills, said in an e-mail that he was called at home Sunday night by an airline representative and advised to obtain a boarding pass online. He arrived at the airport at 5 a.m. for a 6:30 a.m. flight to Pittsburgh and sailed through security.
"Since I did not have any bags to check, I had no reason to visit the ticket counter," he said. "It could not have gone any smoother."
US Airways switched over the weekend to a single reservations system, combining what had been separate systems for US Airways and America West Airlines. The airlines' corporate parents merged in September 2005, but the operations are being integrated much more slowly.
The switch caused delays at many airports throughout the day Sunday. At Philadelphia International this morning, the average wait was an hour and 50 minutes for passengers who needed to buy a ticket or get a boarding pass, US Airways spokesman Philip Gee said.
Adding to the travelers' travails, the online check-in option was shut down for part of the weekend because of the system consolidation, Gee said.
Charlotte, N.C.; Philadelphia; Boston; and Las Vegas were the only cities experiencing problems yesterday, he said.
Airline officials said Sunday that the problems were isolated to just a few cities, but customers reported there were problems in other cities in the airline's network, also due to nonworking kiosks.
About half of the airline's flights arrived more than 15 minutes late Sunday, and about a third of the flights were that late yesterday, Gee said.
Airline officials advised passengers to obtain boarding passes from the US Airways Web site before arriving at the airport.