Joe Brancatelli, travel columnist at USAToday, thought it was strange that US Airways was offering a 20% discount on their international business class flights. So he tried to figure out why. Here’s what he found:

Even your ever-skeptical columnist was shocked at what I found: a near-collapse of the day-to-day operations of US Airways’ Philadelphia-based trans-Atlantic service. Even by this summer’s reduced standards, the operation that US Airways runs between Philadelphia and Europe is shocking.

How about 17% on-time departures from Philadelphia to Glasgow between June 15 and August 15? Or 24% on-time between Philadelphia and London/Gatwick during the same two-month period. Try two in three flights late to Madrid. In fact, all of US Airways flights to Europe except for one are below the atrocious industry on-time average of just 68%.

You might want to spend some extra money to avoid US Airways if you’re flying to Europe. Actually, you might want to just avoid US Airways altogether. Here’s how Joe ends his column:

In the two years since the US Airways-America West merger, US Airways management has proven in a hundred–nay, a thousand–ways that it does not give a damn about its customers, its product, its employees or its reputation. You don’t really think they care about the state of its European operation, do you?

After all, the bosses sit in corporate headquarters in Tempe, Arizona. They’re not going to Europe. For that matter, they don’t go to Philadelphia all that much, either.

U.S. Airways tanks across the pond [USA Today]
(Photo:sphynge)

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