Complaint Rating:

Company information:
US Airways
United States
usairways.com

Basically, I had a round trip ticket from Providence RI to St. Thomas USVI (depart November 2006 and return early-March 2007) booked in November 2006. Arrival to St Thomas was without incident. When I found that my work commitment required me to stay on St Thomas until April, I thought to visit home for a week by adhering to the original itinerary of the round trip ticket, and simply buy a separate one-way return to St Thomas (which I booked mid-Feb 2007). However the return flight to Providence was cancelled by US Airways and consequently the one-way ticket to come back to St. Thomas was made useless. No reasonable alternative could be provided by US Airways, since other alternatives cut my visit home from 6 days down to 4 days and it was too inconvenient to visit home for such a short time. The only alternative I could use was delay the return home until after my work commitment completed.

Since US Airways insisted that I pick the date for the return portion of the round trip ticket within 7 days to avoid a penalty/change fee (when I had no exact date yet when my work commitment would be completed), I was forced to prematurely pick a date to return home in April. I ended up paying $100 penalty when I later learned the date of work completion and changed the return flight appropriately. Also, US Airways insists that I pay another $100 penalty/change fee when attempting to change the separate one-way ticket. Despite US Airways' cancellation rendering this one-way ticket pointless and the airline check-in clerk at the St. Thomas airport documenting that the fee be waived, US Airways insists on the penalty despite my recording of appropriate date/time/names. After 3 attempts over the last year (this value expires and is entirely forfeit after 1 year from booking), I never could redeem a reasonable value of this one-way ticket ($382.10) because any unused value is forfeited after making a change and the penalty/change fee can not be payed for using unused value of the ticket at time of change. I lost the entire value of the ticket because I simply refuse to pay a penalty/change fee for a situation that I had not created willingly. I feel that US Airways handled a simple situation extremely poorly and I feel that US Airways has taken no responsibilty for this situation and left it entirely to me to absorb the costs of their cancellations and delays. I am hard pressed to find any other business that I have ever dealt with that takes your money in advance for a service and handles their cancellations of services in such an inflexible and irresponsible manner and without culpability.