I recently took the following flights from Ithaca, New York (ITH) to London (LGW) and Düsseldorf (DUS) (confirmation code CAJ00V):

27 February 2007:
ITH PHL 3840 Y
PHL LGW 0774 G

7 March 2007:
DUS MUC 0833 S
MUC PHL 0993 K
PHL ITH 3728 K

Originally I'd been booked on the 6.10pm flight from ITH to PHL. On the morning of the very day that I was due to leave, though, I received a telephone call from and agent at the local US Airways office informing me that the 6.10pm flight was often up to two hours late and that I would probably be unable to make my connection in Philadelphia unless I were to leave on the next earlier flight, at 3.15pm. "If you've known all along that the flight usually leaves late, I said, why are you telling me about this only now, and why don't you simply advertise a more realistic flight schedule?" I asked exasperatedly.

"We have no control over what the company does," said the agent.

"I can see that," I replied. "But I have a class to teach till 2.40pm. I can't just leave it."

"Do you have a T.A.?" asked the agent, attempting some semblance of helpfulness. In the end, I curtailed my class and put the teaching assistant in charge during the last half of it. I could have made these arrangements much more efficiently had I known further in advance.

On arriving at ITH and checking in, I asked the agent whether I would need to do anything special to check in in Düsseldorf, on what I supposed was a code-shared Lufthansa flight from DUS to MUC. "No," said the agent, "that's a US Airways flight." When I arrived at Düsseldorf, of course, I found that it was indeed a Lufthansa flight and none of the automated kiosks would accept my US Airways paper ticket. (I had not been given the option to receive electronic tickets.)

On arriving back in Philadelphia from Münich, I found US Airways catastrophically disorganised. This disorganisation seemed not a product of any weather problem; there was no precipitation and the runways were clear. As my flight from Münich had arrived early, I asked an agent whether I could get onto the 4.35pm flight to Ithaca. The agent told me, though, that that flight was cancelled. I pointed to the electronic display, which listed the flight as "ON TIME", and the agent said that the display was wrong and the flight was cancelled.

This problem of the flight status displays being inconsistent with reality continued throughout the evening, and the only way in which I and the other passengers were able to glean information on flight delays and cancellations was by listening for spoken announcements from the gate agents and supervisors. I found it ironic that in the time that I spent in the Philadelphia airport I easily could have driven all the way to Ithaca and halfway back; most of us who were waiting for Ithaca flights spent about seven hours in the airport and had US Airways been willing to hire a bus, we could all have got there much faster.

One passenger became so exasperated about his ruined holiday that he berated one of the gate agents, and instead of taking the argument in stride and avoiding confrontation, the gate agent called the airport police — this despite the fact that the passenger in question never threatened anyone; all he was doing was yelling. I had half a mind to intervene and to criticise the gate agent for treating his customer as a criminal, but I was afraid that if I were to do this the gate agent would call the police against me and I'd be unable to get back to Ithaca that evening.

The only positive aspect of the entire evening was a gate manager named Ronald Shipman, who went out of his way to bring us the latest information on delays and gate changes, and was always calm, friendly, and apologetic, even when faced with some very disappointed and bitter customers. Mr Shipman kept visiting the gate and speaking with us, reassuring us that the airline hadn't forgot about our plight and that we were going to get to Ithaca. In this very adverse circumstance, Mr Shipman was doing a very good job. I wish that I could say the same for US Airways' higher-level management and US Airways' information technology.

Since this incident I've heard from many other passengers that flying US Airways via Philadelphia is hardly ever free of difficulty. Back when US Airways used to fly between Ithaca and Pittsburgh, it was never this bad. In future, unless US Airways restores service from Ithaca to Pittsburgh, or very significantly and decidedly improves management of its operations and on-time performance in Philadelphia, I will avoid flying US Airways from Ithaca and will instead travel to alternate airports in Syracuse, New York or Newark, New Jersey.