September 29, 2003

The terminal that time forgot ... and the airline that time should forget


A week ago, we went to Philadelphia for Allison and John's wedding (pictures to come soon...). For our flight out, we chose to burn up our miles on US Airways. We accumulated too many miles flying on the airline when Meredith's parents lived in Pittsburgh, and this seemed like a good way to use them up.

The terminal that US Air flies out of at SFO really demonstrates the decline in air travel over the last couple of years. The terminal was practically deserted. The (closed) newsstand had magazine covers from over a year ago. It was eery.

The trip was also an excellent reminder of why we haven't flown US Air since Meredith's parents moved away from Pittsburgh. It's safe to say that US Airways is my second least favorite airline (second only to Northwest). My favorite US Air story was from a few years ago, on one of our trips back home from Pittsburgh. The flight was supposed to be non-stop to San Francisco, but they explained to us, as we were boarding, that we would have to make an unscheduled stop in Kansas City. Well, they explained that after they begrudgingly found us some seats, as far apart as possible -- another favorite US Air trick with us. Later, on the plane, the flight attendant explained the reason for the stop: it turned out that they didn't have enough fuel to make it all the way to SFO. This was amazing for several reasons, not least of which was that we were, at the time, still on the ground in Pittsburgh -- where, presumably, they have jet fuel. And one wonders why the airline went bankrupt...

Posted by Mike at September 29, 2003 11:52 PM