My experience on Tuesday 31 July 2007 (record locator EZZS34) connecting from flight 4595 from Ithaca (ITH) to flight 1036 to Boston (BOS) exemplified the poor service that I've come to expect from US Airways whenever I travel through Philadelphia. After delaying the departure from Philadelphia, US Airways lost my checked bag, was rude to me when I inquired about the bag in person, refused even to answer the telephone when I tried to enquire the next day, and on the second day forced me to come to the airport to collect my bag in person rather than delivering it to me.

Flight 1036 was an hour late leaving, and this delay was compounded by the fact that there was no member of staff at the gate who was qualified to operate the jetway, forcing the crew to wait until a qualified operator was located. Although this delay by itself certainly wouldn't have qualified the flight as my worst travel experience in recent years, the departure delay was a mere foretaste of the troubles that US Airways had in store for me. On arriving at Boston, I waited through all the luggage from my flight and from the next arriving flight on carousel C, and my bag was not there. I was far from the only passenger in this situation; several of us waited for bags that did not appear.

When we went to the US Airways baggage office next to the carousel to enquire, we encountered a disinterested employee who seemed more engaged with her own tasks behind the desk than with the task of responding to us customers in front of the desk. (She was a petite, young African-American woman whose name I didn't get.) Here is the conversation that I had with her:

ME: "Hello, we've been waiting for our bags from flight 1036 from Philadelphia, but that flight number has just disappeared from the display. Is there another truckload coming, or is that everything from that flight?"

US AIRWAYS: "We don't control the display. Massport controls it."

ME: "Well I don't care who controls it, I just want to know whether there's another baggage truck coming."

US AIRWAYS: "I don't understand what you're asking."

ME [exasperatedly]: "I'm asking you whether our bags are lost."

US AIRWAYS [standing and walking away through a door behind the desk]: "If the belt stopped then there's no more."

ME [befuddled, to her receding back]: "So, what do we do?"

As your employee declined to say anything in response to this last question of mine, shortly thereafter I asked another employee, Holly, who was passing behind the desk. Holly, in contrast to the first employee, was very helpful and immediately and efficiently filed a tracing request (BOSHP47044, filed at 11.44pm) for me and gave me the paperwork.

The paperwork listed a telephone number for enquiries within 24 hours (617.634.4233). I tried this number many, many times throughout the day, staying home from my office all morning in hopes that my bag might be delivered. Most of the time when I telephoned it rang and rang. Several times, though, the call was connected and then immediately disconnected, as though someone had broken the connection on purpose to stop the ringing. On the late evening of that day, as soon as the baggage delay had amounted to 24 hours, I telephoned your baggage call centre on 1.800.371.4771. Although I was pleasantly surprised to have to spend only a couple of minutes queueing, and the person who answered the call was pleasant and apologetic, she had no further details to give me, and could suggest only that I ring back the next morning.

The next morning, I rang back, and got the same response. Frustrated, I decided to go to the Boston airport to confront the people who weren't answering the local enquiries telephone number (or who sometimes were answering and then immediately disconnecting). By this time, I was irate at US Airways' intransigence. I entered the terminal and immediately found my bag, on the floor next to carousel C. I don't know how long it had been there, but evidently US Airways hadn't thought to telephone me to let me know that it had been found, or even to tell their call centre that it had been found — much less to deliver it promptly after finding it. I told US Airways' baggage agent exactly what I thought of all this. She called a supervisor; his name was Dana, and he and the aforementioned Holly were the only bright spots in this fiasco. Dana listened to me, sympathised with me even when I told him that I was inclined to go to Syracuse in future and to use a different airline rather than pay for a flight on US Airways from Ithaca, and promised to look into the matters of the rude baggage agent and the disconnected telephone calls.

The combination of waiting an extra hour in Philadelphia for a flight that was late to depart, and waiting an hour in Boston for a bag that didn't appear, meant that I could have driven from Ithaca to Boston significantly faster than the time it took me to travel on your airline. And that isn't even counting all the time that I spent the next day futilely trying to track down my bag, and replacing — at some cost — essential items such as my toiletries, and the bicycle helmet which I need every day in order to commute to my office.

I've had troubles with US Airways in Philadelphia earlier this year, too, and simply on the basis of my conversations abord the aircraft, I can assert that horror stories are spreading amongst US Airways customers about their bad experiences. All of us in my row aboard the airplane agreed that the only reason to fly US Airways is when one's route or schedule leaves absolutely no other option. If US Airways can't provide a competent level of service, then you ought to get out of the business and free these routes and departure slots for an airline that can.

You clearly have at least a few good people working for you — Holly and Dana being examples of such. It wouldn't have taken much to have given those people the resources necessary to get the job done. If you have a few hundred bags that you can't deliver immediately, you go get some temporary workers, give them phones and passenger rosters, and have them telephone all of us to let us know at least that our bags have been located. Fixes such as this are very simple to implement, yet you aren't giving your employees the flexibility to implement them.

Again, I'm very disappointed with the lost time and frustration that this experience has cost me, I do not plan to occupy a revenue-generating seat on a US Airways flight through Philadelphia in the foreseeable future, and I plan to advise other customers also to avoid US Airways.