Follow Up on America West

If my rant about America West this morning wasn't good enough, I recently found out that it was timely as if ripped from the pages of this morning's paper. My father-in-law is a consultant and he was on a trip to do some training with ConocoPhillips and he had the misfortune to be on America West. He was going to be routed through Las Vegas, then to Dallas where he would have a 5 hour layover (during the night) and get on an American Airlines flight to his final destination. Well, he got to the airport and found that for no apparent reason at all, America West had cancelled his flight. They booked him on the next flight to Vegas and confirmed that he wanted to be on the 12:40 am-ish flight to DFW. Well, they didn't confirm it. He got to Vegas and they wouldn't let him on the flight. So there he was, stranded in Vegas. He thought that they had then confirmed him for the first flight to DFW in the morning, so he checked into a hotel and slept for a bit, only to wake up, go back to McCarran International Airport, and find that they did the exact same thing to him. Long story short, there were no flights to either DFW or his final destination available until he went down to the Continental counter where they did their best to get him to where he needed to go. They got him directly into where he needed to go, no thanks to either America West or American. This is especially disheartening with all the news about America West and US Airways possibly merging. I have been bequeathed Gold status on US Airways because of my American Express Centurion card, and now I find out that the airline I got status on is one I will probably want to avoid like the plague. Fortunately, I still have Delta and Continental status, so it won't be as bad, but I do have a request for the good people at American Express: please replace US Airways with United! Sure, they're both on death's door and in bankruptcy, but at least one isn't going to have America West hosing their passengers!