If you want to see Christian Menge gripe, go to YouTube.com.
There you can find his lament under the heading "USAirways lost my STUFF. "
In his video, Menge, 38, tells how his laptop disappeared after he checked it as luggage in April before flying from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.
It never turned up. What happened to it is not known.
A former helicopter mechanic and commercial pilot, Menge said he doubted that the luggage system would permit a bag to be simply mislaid.
"I mean, how do you lose a bag?" he said in an interview. "I spent years wrenching helicopters; I know how machines work. A bag does not fall off a machine and get lost. Of course it was stolen. "
According to Menge, it took him months and repeated phone calls to get US Airways to accept his paperwork attesting to his loss.
In part, he blamed this on the airline's call center in Guatemala. "I don't understand what they are saying, and they don't understand what I am saying," he said.
Months after his loss, the airline sent him a coupon worth $200 in air travel - though Menge said his laptop and tools had been worth $1,800.
Like other airlines, US Airways excludes laptops from its liability exposure.
As shown by his YouTube video, Menge remains very upset.
"What kind of business operates that way? " Menge says on his homemade video. "It's just ludicrous. "
Large and small,
changes offer hope
Late last month, Grantham led his team down concrete steps into the work area under US Airways ' bag-claim carousels in the B-C complex.
"We got a leaking sewage pipe up here," Grantham said, stepping through a rubble-filled doorway, maneuvering past a door off its hinges. "This area is prone to flooding. "
Until recently, the fetid air meant US Airways was reluctant to staff the area permanently with extra people to unload bags to speed their way to customers.
That meant the tug driver was usually the only person to tote the bags from the carts to the belt that feeds the carousels above.
But after working with the airport to improve ventilation, US Airways said, it is now stationing extra workers there.
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