We're planning a trip to Isla Mujeres, landing at the Cancun airport, and USA 3000 airline has the best rate and a non-stop flight. While I've seen the name for several years, I know virtually nothing about this airline. Are they reliable, or should I go with more of a "name brand" (which in this case, for non-stop flights, would be AirTran) and a somewhat more expensive flight?

I have used USA3000 to fly to both Florida and Cancun and never had a problem. Only concern I can think of would be that at least for the Pittsburgh market USA3000 has just one flight on a given day to Cancun. Not sure what their policy would be in case of mechanical or weather problems. But, I would not hesitate to use them again.

I have also flown with USA3000 and loved it. Their seats are comfy and service is good.

Just got back from Cancun on USA3000. Was supposed to have a non-stop from Philly to CUN. Booked about 2 months in advance. They called me about 2 weeks before the flight and said that the flight would now be going through Baltimore. "No change of planes but and extra 45 minutes to get to CUN." I agreed, not terrible unreasonable considering the economy. Then 2 days latter I get another call. This one "just wanted to make sure I knew" that the flight would go through customs on the way back in Baltimore. So now my wife, 2 small children, and I and our stack of bags would have to unload go through customs in Baltimore and then reboard before getting back to Philly. I wasn't very happy about this, but what could I do, 12 days before the flight, it wasn't like I could get a good price anywhere else. Well we got to Cancun alright, everything went as planned on the way down. BUT on the way back we got to the airport 2 hours early only to find out that the flight was delayed for 4 hours. Then, without officially announcing it, they changed plans and decided to go to Philadelphia first. This made the two thirds of the passengers that were going to BWI very happy. A few other points: The inflight magazine was from Jan-Mar. It was now July. Sounds like they may have stopped publishing it. Think about what might mean. Also they are no longer serving meals for free, they are serving $7 snack boxes (i.e. a fancy SlimJim and some cheese and crackers). Finally on they way down there was no problem, but on the way back they tried to charge my $50 to bring my boogie board back. My family had 4 tickets and 3 bags plus the boogie board. The boogieboard was about the same width and height as large suitcase, but much slimer and weighed about 2 pounds. In Cancun USA3000 does not have their own gate agents. The gate agents are employed central, probably airport affiliated firm, and then leased to the Airline for duration of the check-in period. While this is efficient, and the agents are intimately familiar with the airport, they have NO discretion whatsoever to bend an airline set rules. If you need any kind of real service, you must see the one or 2 airline employees at the customer service desk. Also, after you go through security there are no airline employees around the boarding gate until minutes before takeoff. There was a rumor going around (during 5 hours of sitting at a gate lots of things are said by passengers and gate agents) that airline was going to be sold by the end of the year. So the short story is my flight there was delayed 45 minutes, flight back delayed 4 hours, but I got a decent price. Also if an airline offer you meal voucher while your waiting in an airport, don't get one voucher for 4 people. Get 4 seperate vouchers. If you have one voucher everyone has to eat at the same place at the same time.

I flew MKE-CUN March of this year and have a couple general comments;
They were certainly cheaper but also charge for lots of other things like 1st checked bag and reserving your own seats online.
There was less leg room on those flights than I have ever experienced before and I do fly 2-3 times a year.

Leaving Cancun, USA3000 flew out of terminal 2 instead of terminal 3 which is unusual since all other international flights leave from T3. Not a big deal and maybe that's changed, just something to be aware of.

On a somewhat good note, we got delayed our first leg and 14 of us missed the ATL-CUN connection. The local agent gets high grades from us all as she really worked hard to get us all to Cancun that day. Long story short, they ended up flying us to Memphis on another carrier that THEY paid for and we picked up our flight to CUN from there. We ended up several hours later arriving in Cancun but they really really came through for all of us.