They Should Call Themselves B.S. Airways

I'm pretty sure that U.S. Airways is the most incompetent air travel company in the states.  Perhaps the world.  It's a shame they have our country's name in their company's name, because it's yet another reason why our country looks bad to others.  Case in point.  The last day of my marathon travel adventure involved a flight to Philly and then a flight to Harrisburg.  The former was on Continental (my original airline), the latter on USAir.  The second flight was literally 20 minutes.  Literally.  Now ok, I know it may be a lot to ask to switch cities and airlines for my travel, but somehow I don't feel like it should be THAT BIG of a deal.  But perhaps because of the sad state of air travel these days, I was not at all surprised by the fact that not one but both of my pieces of luggage were missing when I got to Harrisburg.  Ok fine, I have none of my luggage.  Whatever.  Not like I had my Christmas gifts in there or anything.

I put in my little luggage claim, and we go on our merry way.  So we do Christmas Eve.  We do Christmas.  I get one of my bags back on Christmas Day.  Two days after this my other bag is still missing.  So I call the U.S. Airways Baggage Call Center.  Sounds fancy right?  False.  I will spare you the details, but suffice to say it was a miserable two days of waiting on hold, dealing with incompetence, and getting mostly no helpful answers from anyone.  When you have sat on hold 17 times in one day, talked to as many different people, approximately half of whom speak English well, you kind of start to become annoyed.  Slash irate.  You see, the problem was that for my flights from Seattle to Houston and Houston to Philly I was on Continental.  But that last little 20 minute hop to Harrisburg I was on a U.S. Crapways flight.  So as per the "agreement amongst the airlines" (as I was informed), the airline that last handles the bag is responsible for it.  Even if they are incompetent.  Because every time I was on the phone at Continental, they could tell me exactly where my bag was and how to get it, and encouraged me to suggest how to do so to the U.S. Airways doofi (plural of doofus).  Only it would appear that the U.S. Idioticways staff was unaware of anything even remotely similar.  So there sat my bag in La Guardia, hanging out by its lonesome, unable to be moved by Continental, and apparently unable to be found by U.S. Poopways.

So I decided to make a little trip to our area regional airport to see if I could talk to a live human being and solve the problem.  As it turns out, whether by coincidence or not, it was a fruitful venture and I was able to be told definitively that my bag would be returned to that very airport that very day.  HALLE-FRIGGIN-LU-JAH.  The baggage drama was over.  Or so I thought.  Little did I know that Bag Number 1, returned several days prior, and also the bag I was planning on packing for Romania was effectively broken.  Not by me mind you, given its state of non-brokenness as I handed it to the ticketing agent who placed it on the Mystery Conveyer Belt Which Takes Bags Into an Unknown Land.  But with all of its flying to and fro, it somehow came back with a broken handle.  As in, the thing with which my hand usually pulls my luggage was unable to move from its closed position.  And silly me thought it might just be "jammed."  Or perhaps just needed a good tug from a manly man.  So I packed it up right along with my plan, and took it with me to NYC.  The careful observer might ask, "Why didn't you just take the other one instead?" to which I would respond that Bag Number 2 is very large.  Which is only a problem because the bag itself weighs about 25 pounds, so even with only clothing in it, it is difficult to stay under the 50 pound limit and take any reasonable amount of stuff as compared to its capacity.  Anyway. I brought Bag Number One.  And it's still broken.  Still stuck.  Still problematic.  So I just don't know anymore.  I think I'm going to call Customer Service and demand they send me a brand new bag for all my troubles.  No more Ms. Nice Gal.  We'll see how that goes.  I'll keep you posted.  Surely it will yield more entertaining and ridiculous musings.  Thank you B.S. Airways, you have given me reason to never ever fly your airline.  Ever again.