[SafviSat]

Our family was supposed to fly from San Jose, California to Phoenix, AZ, where we were to connecting to another US Airways flight to Caribbean.

To ensure our flight was not impacted by the bad weather in the east coast, we were in the airport and in contact with multiple representatives of US Airways within 24 hours of our flight to make sure we were not going to be affected in our plans being on the west coast and flying to the Caribbean. However we were continually told there were no problems despite finding out at 3:30 am that our flight, which was suppose to be the first flight out of San Jose was delayed. According to the US Airways website, the reason for the delay of our flight was due to the “aircraft maintenance”, not weather related issues. Due to the delay of this flight, we will miss our connection flight to Caribbean.

We called the customer service at 4am and held for 40 minutes and finally talked to a customer service representative. She said she would NOT have anything available for us until after Christmas, which is after Dec 25th.

We asked her to contact another airline for us to fly out that morning from nearby airports. After holding for another 40 minutes, she told us she was not able to get us help from other airlines either.

We requested to speak to a supervisor; and which point she put us on hold for another 30 minutes. Finally, her supervisor answered the call and told us the same thing, “There is nothing we can do to help you fly out San Jose on Dec 21st, or anytime until after December 25th. You can e-mail our customer relations to file the complaint. We don’t know how long you will get your airfare back if you cancel. Your refund could take up to 2-4 months due to our cancellations process.” Her last greeting to us before hung up the call was " thank you for choosing US Airways. Happy holidays"

STAY AWAY from this airline, no matter how cheap their airfares are. It's not worth saving the money to deal with this airline and their poor customer services.

[SafviSat]

Be careful of them telling you the aircraft is under technical maintainance, because a lot of times, they do NOT have a crew and airplane!

[PHXFlyer]

I'm sorry to hear that your travel plans were ruined and I know it won't make you feel any better but you're in the same situation as thousands of others who were impacted by the massive east coast storm. Most of US Airways' flights to the Caribbean fly out of their hubs in Philadelphia and Charlotte. Being it's the week before Christmas I'm not surprised the only availability to re-book you was after Christmas. All airlines have cut back their capacity due to the economy and the result is that flights are very full. Add to that the holiday and the storm and it's just a big mess of a backlog.

As for the refund normally it takes anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks. Due to the number of refunds processed from cancelled flights over the past couple of days I'm sure there is a backlog there as well. 2 to 4 months sounds like a bit of an exaggeration but they are probably quoting extra time to account for the backlog so you don't have an unreasonable expectation as to when your refund finally appears.

Originally Posted by SafviSat

Be careful of them telling you the aircraft is under technical maintainance, because a lot of times, they do NOT have a crew and airplane!

How can you substantiate a statement like this? From your own account you never went to the airport. Even if you had just because you don't see a plane doesn't mean it's not in a hangar or elsewhere on the tarmac being worked on. If a broken plane sits at a gate then other scheduled arriving and departing flights can't use that gate it is occupying. It's not uncommon for the plane to be towed elsewhere if it is known the repair time will be lengthy.

[jimworcs]

Frankly, if the problem was mechanical, I would check other airline routes carriers and see if you can find one. Then call US Airways back and ask them to book you on to the alternative carrier. If this is not weather related, you are entitled to remedy, as the airline is responsible for unavailability due to mechanical reasons or lack of crew. You might also want to contact the DOT.

[PHXFlyer]

It would help if the OP posted the flight number out of SJC, where they were connecting, and their final destination however it already sounds like they've given up on their vacation as they've requested a refund. It realy doesn't surprise me, however, that there was no availability. In addition the OP never mentioned how many were traveling, only that it was a family. Perhaps there was the odd seat or two hither and thither but nothing that could accommodate all of them on the same flights.