Airline to avoid

Sometimes an airline develops the stink of failure. Two prime symptoms: 1) the prices are low. By itself, this is not necessarily a red flag. But if you couple that with 2) they start canceling flights, then you know they are in trouble. Couple that with 3) bad PR, and you know the low price is because they are desperate to get more fliers. But here's the problem- if you give in to the lure of the low price, are you sure they will still be flying when you have the ticket for? And even if they are still alive, if they are canceling flights left and right, what good does your ticket do anyway?

Last Sunday I was sitting in the Manchester NH airport. My Southwest flight had been rescheduled because of earlier bad weather in the area that had a domino effect. But all the flights were still going, just late. In contrast US Airways had 3 flights. They canceled the first and the last- not rescheduled, but out and out canceled. So anyone who was on the late flight who didn't check flight status (because maybe they were on vacation) would be out of luck. And anyone on the earlier flight would simply get home much later. On that same night one of our guides trying to get to Maine had her US Airways flight canceled and she had to buy a whole new ticket.

So that does it for me. We are not booking any more US Airways flights to anywhere ever again, no matter what the price. Some times it is time for an airline to disappear. I would argue that it is that time for US Airways.