WASHINGTON, D.C. - Parkersburg resident Morris Pike, 82, caught the first plane from Burlington, Vt., on Monday after learning that his wife had died the day before.
He expected to be home with his family Monday afternoon, he said, after catching a U.S. Airways Express connector flight to Charleston, from Reagan National Airport in Washington.
Instead, he spent more than seven hours waiting at Reagan National.
His flight was delayed to 4:10 p.m., then 6 p.m., then 7:15 p.m., then 9:10 p.m., then 10:05 p.m.. He finally arrived at Yeager around 11 p.m.
Cubby McMenamy, sales manager for FAS Windows in Tampa, Fla., was one of 33 other passengers on that flight. He and other FAS staff were headed to Parkersburg, he said, to sign a sales agreement for Simonton Windows' new hurricane-resistant windows.
"We're going to have to regroup," he said around 9:30 p.m.
The problem: Their Charleston shuttle was grounded at Yeager Airport with mechanical problems in the icy weather.
US Airways ticketing staff told Charleston passengers that the Charleston-Washington shuttle has been delayed or canceled almost every night for a month.
"We're used to people being mad at us, but we don't like it either," said Reagan desk clerk Brian Ferguson.
US Airways contracts with regional carrier Colgan Air, based in Memphis, Tenn., to operate its express shuttle flights between Charleston and Reagan and Dulles airports.
"Just about every night for the past month, it's been something," US Airways supervisor Patricia Jones told Charleston passengers Monday. "Last night, the plane went out at 10. Other times, the flight is canceled."
Yeager Airport spokesman Brian Belcher said Friday that, for the past three weeks, numerous flights on several airlines were delayed because the airlines' deicing equipment was broken, as were ground power units needed to start the planes.
"We work the GPUs harder in ice and snow," he said.
The airlines repaired that equipment earlier this week, he said.
"Such equipment problems are the responsibility of the airlines, not the airport," he said. But Yeager has bought its own ground power units, he said, so they could be lent to airlines in the future to avoid delays. "And we're thinking about buying a de-icing unit.
"Most of our flights are shuttle flights that fly back and forth between Charleston and a given city," he said. "So when the plane can't go out or is delayed in the morning, it delays its flights for the entire day. We don't want to see that happening any more than necessary."
Belcher said he has no statistics for delays and cancellations at Yeager since each regional airline keeps their own statistics, and "they don't have to give them to us, and our flight information system does not keep stats on delays."
Regional airlines now operate more than half of all flights nationally, according to the FAA.
"After 9/11, people stopped flying for a while, so the major airlines started contracting with smaller airlines," Belcher said. The trend escalated after fuel prices zoomed up in 2008, he said.
"At this point, every flight in the state of West Virginia is a regional airline flight except for AirTran out of Yeager and Allegiant Airlines in Huntington," Belcher said. Colgan alone bases at least 40 staffers in Charleston.
Regional airlines have received more public attention since, almost a year ago, a Continental Connection flight operated by Colgan Air crashed in icy weather as it approached Buffalo International Airport, killing 50 people in Colgan's first fatal incident.
Last Monday, after seven hours of delay, Colgan sent another plane from Dulles Airport to pick up the Charleston passengers.
"The [U.S. Airways] supervisor gave me a big hug," said passenger Morris Pike. "They were as upset about this as we are."
Pike had expected to drive home in the daylight to join his family after his wife died. He has night blindness, so US Airways staff at Reagan gave him a hotel voucher. His voucher turned out to be for a hotel in Charleston, S.C. Yeager staff switched it to West Virginia.
"It's been a long day," he said.
"We hope not to see many more of those," Belcher said. "I am 99.9 percent sure that's been solved."
