Two Airlines Can’t Get Past Holiday Turbulence

Two airlines plagued by computer glitches, sickouts and lost luggage struggled to resume operations Sunday as an estimated 62.7 million Americans ended their Christmas holiday travel.

Some US Airways passengers were separated from their luggage for a fourth straight day Sunday, and spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said the airline was “working through the backlog” and hoped by day’s end to “get through that as well as accommodate our stranded passengers.”

The airline canceled more than 176 flights Friday, and 143 on Christmas Day, blaming the problems on severe weather in the country’s midsection, and on what Kudwa called “an unusually high” number of flight attendants and baggage handlers at Philadelphia International Airport calling in sick.

“We’re making significant progress,” Kudwa said, adding that she could not quantify how many bags, many presumably containing Christmas presents, remained separated from their owners. The airline said it ran extra flights to take baggage to Charlotte, N.C., where it had sufficient staff, and also sent managers to Philadelphia to handle baggage and other managers to serve as flight attendants.

Greg Martin, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said Sunday that the US Airways problems in Philadelphia “had a ripple effect on flights throughout the county.” For example, he said, on Friday night US Airways gates at the Philadelphia airport became increasingly congested because of a shortage of baggage handlers, and “the airline asked the FAA to issue a ground stop on flights departing for Philadelphia.”

At Los Angeles International Airport, where US Airways has 11 daily departures and 11 daily arrivals, officials said operations over the weekend were normal, with the only delays caused by weather in the East.

The U.S. Department of Transportation, which is investigating what happened at the Philadelphia airport, monitored US Airways travel Sunday.

At Comair, a Delta commuter airline based in Cincinnati, delays and cancellations forced by a storm over the Ohio Valley overwhelmed the airline’s computer system.

The computer collapse caused the airline to cancel all of its 1,100 flights on Christmas Day. On Sunday, Comair expected to fly up to 20% of its flights. Officials at Comair said they hoped to be on “a full schedule” by Wednesday.

But Martin, the FAA spokesman, said it might take longer. “We anticipate that it will take several more days, up to the first of the year, before they get back to normal,” he said.

Both airlines’ websites made note of the travel traumas.

US Airways’ site said: “We sincerely apologize for the operational disruptions that have impacted holiday travel. Our efforts to recover from the severe weather on Thursday were complicated when some of our employees chose to call in sick at record numbers over the weekend.”

The airline, which this month reached tentative agreement with its flight attendants as part of a restructuring plan to save the ailing company about $94 million, said it was “embarrassed by the situation, especially given the holidays.”

Customers were frustrated by the delayed delivery of their Christmas presents.

“They ruined my children’s Christmas,” one woman told Fox News.

The FAA’s Martin said 2004 marked the first year that the nation’s air traffic topped the level before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, exceeding the 2001 mark by 3% in some markets.

Times staff writer Jennifer Oldham in Los Angeles and Times wire services contributed to this report.