I left Delta and Continental off my list-close your eyes they are all alike.

I hate US Air, but they are one of the airlines at my neighborhood airport (Long Beach, or LGB) so I often choose them just for convenience. I certainly do NOT like their service, and I hate PHL with the white-hot passion of a million bitter little suns. The planes are safe, but their maintenance of the interiors is awful. One time they tried to bump me on an LGB-PHX flight because my seat was-- get ready-- BROKEN. I had to get on that plane (my mom was ill, my sister was going through cancer treatment, it was NOT a happy trip), and it took a lot of complaining to get on.

All of the airlines have major problems, seemingly, and staff are generally really unhappy (I have lots of friends who fly with the airlines, so I hear stories). It shows, believe me!

I avoid US Air whenever possible.

I do love one airline - Lufthansa.

Don't mind Austrian Air either...

The Federales collect consumer complaints about late flights, lost/mishandled luggage etc and compile regular reports ranking the airlines. You will learn a lot more about an airline from these reports than from random anecdotes from people on the internet.

http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/reports/atcr08.htm for a link to the latest reports.

US Air doesn't rank very high in most categories, unfortunately. They did a poor job handling the merger with AmWest.

Bill

Yes everyone has their horror stories for almost every airline, but USAIR is a bit worse for one main reason. They have carried preferred travel to such an extreme that it is not worth traveling on their airline as a "lay" customer. 3) The still don't know how to handle luggage. I have pictures of their Boston baggage claim system being blocked by hundreds of lost bags.

Here is my recent experience. 1) I get a crappy seat because I am not a preferred traveler. 2) In Boston they crowd "lay" travelers into a narrow security checkpoint ill-equipped to handle the traffic and reserve the larger checkpoint for preferred and first class travelers only.

For the same reason, I avoid United like the plague. I have 200,000 lifetime miles on United and I still wont fly them unless I am going to Chicago. Fortunately, JetBlue is beginning to offer service between Boston and Chicago.

I fly almost every week and I chose JetBlue when I can. I have my share of horror stories with JetBlue, but at least I get a comfortable seat with Direct-tv.

USAIR is the worst piece of crap airlines I have flown and I pity the poor preferred fliers who have endured such misery to get their elite status.

1: US Airways is the WORST airline in the U.S.

2: I fly out of PIT so I have reason to despise them!

Again, I've flown US Air about 120 times in the past 10 years, and, knock on wood, US Air has never lost my checked luggage and I've never had a bad experience.

(My home airort is LGA.)

Stopped flying them because of their extreme preference for elite pax. Now that there are codeshares with United and the two both rope off large sections of coach to reserve for premium travelers, there's almost no point in even checking them when I want to fly.

Wonder when the airlines will figure out that just courting business and elite pax will eventually lose them the marginal customers who might just make up their margin. Probably never because they keep cutting flights and raising fares so the only people who CAN fly are the subsidized (by their business) and the wealthy.

Was nice while it lasted, but a tourist deterred from flying is tourist dollars that won't land at a destination.

My faves are Southwest and Jetblue. My family and I haven't flow US Air much lately (DD usually flies AA from San Jose to Austin). When we did I don't recall negative experiences, maybe more delays now that I read this.

I'm using them again Seattle to Puerto Vallarta next week (thru Phoenix). They had the best fare, times, and routings beating the other carriers by quite a bit.