Don't transfer thru Philly!

Only reason why I took the US airways flight was because we had an ultra early 3 connection return flight with some long layovers in FRA and SEA and this flight popped up as a Star Alliance FF flight about 2 weeks before we left.

I should have stayed with the connections on Lufthansa. At least the seats were comfortable on the US Airways flight.

I never usually have problems flying in or out of Philadephia... unless I'm on US Air! That awful airline is at the crux of many of the problems at the Philadelphia airport.

US Airways other hub Charlotte is a POS as well although we did manage to clear customs fairly quickly but that was only because we were first off the plane.

Crew in Envoy (Business) Class from CDG-CLT was the worst I have ever seen and we've got better service in coach on international flights. I'm not a really picky person, usually a smile and at least a passing interest would be acceptable but the crew couldn't even accomplish that.

Fought with the CLT lounge person over access to the lounge with Envoy-1st Class tickets who assured me there was no such thing despite what our tickets and the gate agent said. Had to get a manager involved.

I will avoid US Airways from now on. Lesson learned.

All that just to save a few dollars flying US Err. It's not worth it. US Air's service was abysmal.

I had a carryon bag, so I only had to go through Immigration. Worst part was that they dump you outside of security and you have to go right back through. Half of all TSA personnel in Philly are assigned to do nothing but harass the passengers.

But let me tell you. The next time I flew through Newark (EWR) and they are almost as bad. The best places to fly through, IMO, are Detroit and Atlanta. But Atlanta is no closer to me than Philly, and you have to fly up the coast for an hour before you get even with Philly, so it makes the flight long.

Lee, Tyson, I have learned my lesson; No more US Air for us!

On top of that the seat pitch was really tight on the trip over. I had checked Seat Guru and found out that they had two seat distances for the type of plane that we flew on....and, sure enough, we got the "tight seat pitch plane".

What fun it was trying to get my 6'3" frame in that seat. We went thru hell just to save a few $$$$...I think that I learned my lesson!

We just came though Newark both ways. If I knew how to make a bomb, I'd get all the people (workers and travelers) out, blow the place to smitherines and let them start over -- with all new workers. The only folks that had a lick of sense were the TSA crowd.

Ed, they must have replaced the TSA workers who were in Newark when I was there.

First place, to get to the international gates, you have to go out of security and reenter. Stupido! The security to get to the international gates was disorganized. They ran out of the gray tubs where you put stuff on the conveyor. Nobody in TSA figured it out until they wondered why there was no one coming through the metal detector, then they brought some to the loading point, but still not enough for all the backlog of passengers by that time. I think they have an upper IQ limit of about 50.

I recall one time that I had a connection through Philly to LA and the initial flight was being delayed 90 minutes because the crew came in late the night before and could not fly until those 90 minutes. That gave me about 10 minutes to go from A - C and I complained. They said there should be plenty of time and I asked about how long it would take to physically get from one to the other. They then said it would never work. They limoed me to JFK and gave me a business class ticket for a flight that actually got in sooner than the flight from Philly. That was the only time I've flown Business and it was heaven.

Last year, I flew into Munich on USair. 2 months prior to our flight, i was paying attention to the arrival times, and noted that my flight was arriving anywhere from 30 minutes to 9 hours late. I asked in a RS forum why that is. I was told that there was only 1 international runway and that can cause a traffic jam that can cause delays. But also too a lot of low priority flights fly out of Philly and that sometimes they take a low priority flight's plane and exchange it for a high priority flight's breakdown, leaving travelers stranded until a replacement plane comes along. So hearing all this, I was worried about flying into Munich. Well, I have to say, I was comfortable, the in flight entertainment was good, and our flight arrived 45 minutes early. But.......the flight attendents were a bunch of cold b#@ches, guys and gals both. Mean like catholic school nuns. Flying back into Philly from Frankfurt was a different story. We were delayed with no explanation back to Tampa for 4 hours, arriving sometime after midnight.

Every airline has its downfall lately. I can't say that one is better than the other because flying these days is not fun what so ever. It's the only time in my life where I hate everyone around me because IMO,, everyone is acting a fool.