US Airways have a strategy for ensuring that they seldom actually have to pay up for the face value of the flight coupons that they hand out when they bollox up their customers' flight schedules and lose their customers' luggage: the coupons are valid only at (1) at travel agencies, where one has to pay the agency fee, or (2) at US Airways ticket counters, which require that one go to an airport to buy the ticket, or (3) at the one remaining US Airways city ticket office which is in Tempe, Arizona.

I tried once before to use the voucher that I received from US Airways in compensation for my horrid experience travelling from Düsseldorf to Ithaca via Münich and Philadelphia, but was unable since the queue at the airport ticket counter was full of irate passengers whose flights had been cancelled, and I didn't have time to wait. Instead I used a Dividend Miles reward.

This time at least there was only one person ahead of me in the queue. My interaction with US Airways staff, though, typified my previous experiences: amidst a series of sullen and grudging employees, I encountered one — and only one — who was genuinely helpful and who really deserved to be working for a more competent organisation. The voucher said that it was valid only at a ticket counter. So I cycled out to Boston Logan Airport and went to the ticket counter. The conversation went like this:

AGENT #1: I don't know how to do that. [Beckons AGENT #2.]

AGENT #2: What flight are you on?

ME: Well I'm not on any flight yet; I'm booking a trip for the end of this month using this voucher, which has to be used at a ticket counter.

AGENT #2: Oh so you're not leaving today? You need to call in first and set up your itinerary.

ME: But this says that it has to be used at a ticket counter.

AGENT #2: Yes, after you call in, you come back here.

AGENT #2: So you're saying that even though I'm standing here in front of a US Airways reservations desk, I need to go to a pay phone to make my reservation?

AGENT #2: [dismissively] That's the way we do it.

Agent #1 then had to telephone another office to find out what telephone number I ought to ring. She scribbled the number onto a ticket jacket, and I found a pay phone.

It was at this juncture that I encountered a competent and extraordinarily helpful person: after steeling myself for what I expected would be a long wait in a telephone queue followed by a fight with voice recognition software, I was pleasantly surprised when a human answered, after less than a minute's time queueing. I explained that I was speaking to him from a telephone near the US Airways ticket counter at the Boston airport, that I'd come to the ticket counter because I was trying to use a voucher that could be used only at the ticket counter, and that the ticket counter staff had told me that I needed to telephone. “Oh,” he said, confirming my assessment of the ticket counter staff, “they just didn't want to set up the reservation. I can help you with that, though.”

He offered me an outbound routing through Philadelphia, and I said, “Actually do you have anything through La Guardia? Philadelphia is such a mess.”

“Yeah,” he agreed sympathetically — scoring big points here with me for admitting this fact — “it is. I have an 11am to La Guardia.”

The reservation was completed rapidly and efficiently, and within minutes I had an itinerary and a confirmation code to take back to the ticket desk. The punch line? “Can you add my Dividend Miles number to that record?” I asked.

“Actually the ticket counter can handle that,” he reassured me, his tone of voice making it clear that he knew that the ticket counter staff were incompetent but that it wouldn't take competence to attach the number. “It's been a while since I did reservations.” Amazing: this guy is one of the few extremely helpful employees at US Airways, and he doesn't usually deal with reservations! It's as though an orientation towards customer service disqualifies an employee from occupying a first-line customer service post. I thanked the helpful guy on the phone, and returned to the ticket counter.

All the agents staffing the ticket desk had left promptly at 5pm. It would have been nice if they'd told me that this was going to happen. After I explained the situation, though, the agent at the check-in desk was able to accept the voucher, to add my Dividend Miles number to the record, and to issue a ticket for the itinerary that I'd just booked by telephone. Phew. (Now we'll see what happens on the days of travel — although I'm outbound through La Guardia which doesn't have as lousy a reputation as Philadelphia, I am returning via Philadelphia because I want to meet for a couple of hours at the airport with my programmer who's based in Philadelphia. This time I'm planning to take only a carry-on bag, since I know that there's a high probability that any checked luggage will be lost.)

The outbound flight was even worse than I've come to expect:

To the staff of US Airways:

Three strikes and you're out. Over the past several months I've given you three separate opportunities to avoid cancelling or severely delaying my flight and/or losing my luggage, and every time you've screwed it up. That's it. You're not getting any more chances from me.

On Friday 28 September 2007, my 11.00am US Airways Shuttle flight 2125 from Boston (confirmation code GR2914, ticket number 03721453400512) arrived on time at La Guardia at 12.11pm. Then the troubles began. I arrived at gate 6 to find the departure time of my 1.30pm flight listed as 1.50pm. I watched as this departure time changed to 2.50pm, then 2.45pm, then 3.10pm, and then 4.06pm. Then an announcement was made that we'd be boarding at 3.30pm, although the status display still claimed 4.06pm and was never updated. US Airways did belatedly produce a spare plane after it became clear that the scheduled equipment wasn't going to become available anytime soon, and I did actually board that plane at 3.30pm, but it then took till 4.17pm for the plane to taxi and enter the runway.

With many of us having resignedly assumed that the 4.06pm departure time was at least a lower bound on when the plane would leave, some passengers had visited airport eateries or bars immediately before the sudden 3.30pm boarding call. So of course, after 47 minutes of taxiing, the inevitable happened: someone needed a toilet.

On this ersatz airplane, there was no toilet. I hoped silently that the passenger in question would do what we were all imagining, and piss in a cup for the sake of our schedule — no such luck.

The plane returned to the gate, discharging one bursting passenger and his father, and pushed back again at 4.35pm. The plane finally left the ground at 5.13:50pm and touched down in Ithaca at 6.08:19pm, and I finally arrived in the terminal a few minutes later, having taken an hour longer than it would have taken to drive there (not even counting the time that it took to get to the airport).

You may perhaps be sending me more Aircheck coupons in response to this complaint. If so, I will add these coupons to my existing collection of Aircheck coupons, where — absent some drastic change in US Airways' level of service — they'll lie unused whilst I take my business to Boston-Maine Airways (doing business as Pan Am Clipper Connection), who fly direct between Bedford, Massachusetts and Elmira, New York, and who have never severely delayed my flight or lost my luggage.

I intend to advertise Boston-Maine's service very aggressively to my colleagues at Cornell who have business in Boston. I hope that we can do our part to send your company into the bankruptcy that it so abundantly deserves.