I flew USAir this weekend. My flight to NYC was nice...WE GOT LUNCH! I was shocked! It's only a 30 minute flight too! But the landing was so shaky, I was so scared! My flight back was annoying (kid kicking my seat the whole way) and the landing was even worse!!!!!

I'm no fan of US Air myself, but ...

When you say he "got to the airport an hour early," do you mean "arrived at the building" or "got to his gate"? Because no airline starts boarding an hour before departure, so if he was actually at his gate that early, he wouldn't have been denied boarding.

If he just arrived at that airport that early, well, almost all airport and airline websites have been advising passengers to arrive TWO hours early - since Sept. 11, 2001, so it's not exactly new news. It can take a loooooong time to get through the counter line and security these days.

That said, I wouldn't advise flying any airline in bankruptcy ... they got there for a reason.

He was at the gate an hour early and WAS denied boarding. That's when they gave him this "there's a war on, things are different" crap.

Plus, as Tracy said, US Air pretty much owns things around here so unless you want endless connections and flights that are completely inconvenient to you, you really don't have a choice.

Hmmmm ... I hate to sound like a cynic, but the only way I could see that being possible was if the flight had been overbooked, and enough passengers had checked in before him to make it full. That being the case, though, he shouldn't be SOL for the next flight out (which is a dumb policy anyway).

FuzzieAlum, actually, international flights can start boarding an hour early - my flight to Hong Kong did. But I've never heard of a domestic flight boarding that early.

sigmagrrl, were you on the shuttle? I used to take the shuttle all the time. It's pretty nice - but these days, if I needed to get around the Northeast corridor and couldn't drive, I'd take Acela. It costs about the same, and with security being what it is, it takes about the same amount of time.

Yeah, sorry, I assumed it was clear that we were talking about domestic flights.

I don't mean to cast aspersions on 33 or her friend - being in the airline business, though, I figure I know what the worst going on is, and I'm always amazed when a company fails to meet my already low expectations.

I flew US Air for the first time in a while to Orlando, and as we were taxiing to the runway, the pilot introduced himself, told us about how long the flight would take, and at the end said, "Thank you for choosing US Airways. In case you didn't know, we could really use your money."