Winging It

It's a start. Of course, he's in Pheonix, so we'll see what his influence on the east coast will be.

Mr. Belden,

I have emailed you previously reference WHEN PHL International will have non-stop flights to Latin America. Cities such as Mexico City, Bogota, Caracas, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, Santiago, Lima and many others have a tremendous potential for PHL. You mentioned in a response that you would tackle this. Just wanted to know if you have a positive response?

All the best, many thanks. There are endless possibilities for revenue, tourism, college students to come if we have easy acesss of flights as an "international destination/gateway. Latins/Hispanics are now the largest minority in the U.S., yet PHL offers no service to Latin America? How can this be????

Tom

I thought you would get kick out of this. My wife and I flew from PHL to Athens on 9/4. I am a Platinum member and l fly US Airways often. I have the normal run of the mill complaints but haven't experienced any outrageous situations until this flight. It is over a 9.5 hour flight that leaves at 4 pm ET. This means I'm not going to get much sleep because of the early departure time.

Check in went smooth, the Envoy club was very nice and the flight left the gate on time and it was wheels up by 4:15.

Five minutes into the flight neither my wife or I could get our overhead lights to work. We were in Row 4 in Envoy Class. I informed the flight attendant and she told she was aware of the problem. (apparently at least two rows had mal-functioning lights) I asked her when did she make this discovery and she told me (with a straight face but with a tinge of sarcasm) last Thursday when she reported the problem. I told her that I hoped she didn't expect us to fly in the dark for 7 hours and I was told that they would keep the main cabin lights on until they saw people trying to sleep. (I will add that these lights are insufficient if you have an aisle seat). I told her she would turn off those lights over my dead body and I didn't care who was trying to sleep. There was no way I or my wife were going to sit in the dark.

Around 7 PM (with 6.5 hours to go) the cabin went dark. I marched to the front and demanded they turn the lights back on and told them it was outrageous that they would fly a plane for almost week in such a condition. I offered to switch our seats with another couple who might be complaining. They thought that was good idea and we worked it out.

How does an airline that is trying to market itself as an International carrier allow this to happen? Bad management.

Jack Fleming

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