How US Airways messed up our ticketing

In October 2006, my husband purchased tickets through Travelocity for a flight from Seattle to Florence leaving February 8, 2007. The first leg of the flight was on US Airways. The airline refused to sell him e-tickets and sent him paper tickets. Six weeks after my husband purchased the tickets, he received an email from Travelocity saying there was a problem with the ticket and asking him to call customer service.

US Airways had cancelled the initial departing flight. The US Airways customer service rep told us we had the following options:

  1. US Airways could refund the cost of the ticket and we could buy a new ticket on another airline (Ticket prices having risen $400 in the 6 weeks since they issued the ticket)

  2. US Airways would rebook my husband onto the "first available" flight to Florence-- leaving February 12, 2007 (4 days later than originally booked!)

  3. My husband could show up at the airport on the day of the flight and hope US Airways could find a seat for him on another flight

 

After spending an hour and a half on the phone with the utterly useless and incompetent customer service agent for US Airways whose broken English was so bad I could hardly understand him, I finally hung up. I checked the US Airways website and discovered there was indeed a flight to Florence on February 8, and since US Airways was still selling tickets for it, it obviously wasn't full. I called back and asked a new customer service rep to re-book my husband on that exact flight. They did so without delay and told us all we needed to do was have my husband stop at the US Airways counter at SeaTac to have them print a new ticket. Why they didn't offer that option at the outset, I don't know.

Had I known that US Airways would lose the suitcase containing our handmade Carnivale costumes though, I would have taken the refund and bought a ticket on another airline. You can read the full story on that here