Caught errors themselves

Nine months out, on Dec. 6, 2006, my wife and I called US Airways directly and purchased three tickets for a Sept. 8, 2007, flight from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Philadelphia and on to Venice, Italy, with return from Rome on Sept. 24. For the three of us we paid $5,521 for full-fare economy-class tickets, then upgraded to business class using frequent-flyer points.

Being proactive, we often checked these reservations online. On one check a month or so before the trip, the reservations for one of us had simply disappeared from the computer. When the missing reservation was located by an airline agent, there was no reason given and no apology for the problem it could have caused had it not been found before check-in day.

Naturally concerned, we monitored the reservations more frequently. About two weeks before our departure date, a check showed that the time of the flight to Philadelphia had been moved ahead, not leaving enough time for the change of flights to Venice.

Upon our calling to work out the problem, the agent wanted to charge $100 a ticket to change us to another US Air flight leaving near the time of our original flight. Only upon talking to a US Air supervisor were the changes made without cost. Again, no explanation was given for our not having been notified of the time change.

Arriving in Charlotte early to check in and have breakfast before departure, we were given our boarding passes. Before leaving the desk, we noticed that there were no seat assignments for the flight to Philadelphia.

Upon investigation, the desk clerk found that a change had been made to another type of plane that did not have the same number of rows as the original plane.

Several telephone calls later she found seats: two nonreclining seats against a bulkhead and one at the back of the plane. She did not know how to reconcile the fact that they were not in business class.

Since at least 45 minutes had passed and there were people waiting behind us, we were relieved just to be able to get on the flight, as departure time was looming.

Fortunately, all instances were resolved: the missing passenger record was restored, an earlier flight time was obtained, and seats on the flight to Philadelphia were found though not in business class. Any one of these could have resulted in a real disaster for us, and it mystifies us that in each instance we were the ones who discovered the problem.

Where is the responsibility of the airline to its passengers? We certainly did not get the service we thought we had paid for.

Other than the initial Charlotte-Philadelphia flight, we flew business class on every leg of the trip and everything went as planned. However, we used lots of computer time in Europe trying to be sure everything was going to work correctly.

ROBERT G. DAVIDSON

Columbia, SC

ITN sent a copy of the above letter to US Airways (4000 E. Sky Harbor Blvd., Phoenix, AZ 85034) on March 4 and received no reply.

In a follow-up, Mr. Davidson told ITN, “Initially, we were not offered any compensation for our flying from Charlotte to Philadelphia in coach class rather than business class. After inquiry, in November we each were offered a voucher for $50. We responded that we did not think that offer was fair. US Air responded in December that there was no reason to alter the voucher offer, and that is when we wrote to ITN. On April 30 we received from US Air payment coupons of $199.73 each ($599.19 total). We will use the cash and, hopefully, get a chance to use the vouchers as well.