Airline's shakeup sends 2 to Phila.

US Airways, in a major management reshuffle, has replaced its Philadelphia airport manager and posted two new senior executives here for the first time in an effort to improve operations and customer service in its biggest international hub.

The airline, Philadelphia International Airport's largest, with 60 percent of the traffic, said yesterday that the two veterans from other airlines would assume new executive positions overseeing East Coast and Philadelphia operations - both based in Philadelphia.

The move was an acknowledgment by the airline, based in Tempe, Ariz., that trying to guide the huge Philadelphia operation from 2,100 miles away has not worked as hoped.

"I think the company needs to be better represented on the East Coast at the executive level," Robert Isom, US Airways' executive vice president and chief operating officer, said in an interview.

Suzanne Boda, 48, was appointed senior vice president, East Coast, international and cargo operations, making her the highest-ranking executive the airline has ever based in Philadelphia. She was with Northwest Airlines for 24 years, most recently as vice president of in-flight services. She also has been a vice president in charge of Northwest's airport customer service and of overseeing its Memphis hub.

Robert Ciminelli, 56, a former manager of American Airlines' operations at New York LaGuardia Airport and its Dallas/Fort Worth airport hub, was named vice president of Philadelphia operations. He has extensive experience at other major American Airlines airports, including Washington's Reagan National.

US Airways executives at its headquarters in Arizona have faced an uphill struggle to satisfy customers in Philadelphia since the company was combined in September 2005 with America West Airlines.

The executives from the West discovered they needed to spend close to $30 million to upgrade equipment and facilities in Philadelphia. They were so short of people and basic equipment such as luggage carts last year that it often took an hour to return passengers' bags to them after a flight.

In March, US Airways botched a switch-over to a new reservations system, causing massive delays and angering more passengers. Last summer, managers in Philadelphia caught dozens of baggage handlers filing fraudulent claims for overtime. In August and September, there was a spike in reports of property missing from outbound luggage from Philadelphia.

As the year continued, however, complaints dropped sharply, and some passengers, when asked in the last two weeks by The Inquirer for feedback on US Airways' service, say they've noticed a marked improvement. Thanks in part to good weather on the East Coast, flight delays went down this fall at Philadelphia and at other congested airports in the Northeast.

Some passengers, though, may never forgive US Airways for all the lost bags, delayed flights, unkempt airplanes and airport gates, and poor attitudes of some employees.

The new Philadelphia managers will replace Tony Grantham, managing director of its hub since January 2006, whom airline executives praised in a statement for his "dedication, diligence and tenacity" in providing a foundation for better service.

Grantham will return to the Arizona headquarters to work on automation projects within the customer-service department, the statement said.

Isom, the chief operating officer, said basing the new managers at Philadelphia airport was at the heart of a renewed effort to improve customer service. He said that hiring seasoned senior executives from other carriers was part of a restructuring of operations that directly affect US Airways passengers.

"I want US Airways' Philadelphia operations to be a world-class operation. We've got some work to do," said Isom, who joined US Airways last fall from Northwest.

Isom said that among the work still to be done in Philadelphia were installation of faster devices used by the Transportation Security Administration for screening checked bags, and the addition of new display screens in the ramp areas next to each gate that give workers up-to-the-minute information about flights.

Airline consultants said US Airways was overdue in basing senior executives at its largest international connecting point, and in understanding that airline operations on the East and West Coasts can be quite different.

"It's critical they be based there," said Michael Boyd, president of aviation advisers the Boyd Group in Evergreen, Colo. "You've got to see it, feel it, inhale that jet exhaust."

Robert W. Mann, president of industry analyst R.W. Mann Associates in Port Washington, N.Y., said Ciminelli should prove valuable because of his experience at LaGuardia in New York. Unlike the Phoenix and Las Vegas airports, America West's hubs, LaGuardia and Philadelphia both have hundreds of flights a day, operating at airports hemmed in by development and in the midst of the high-traffic area of the Northeast. Both airports also have highly unionized workforces, he said.

"They're bulking up," Mann said of US Airways. "If this was the White House, they would call it a surge."

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