US Airways Prioritizes Customer Service

US Airways announced a renewed focused on customer service, including fixing problems specific to the airline's East coast operations. The carrier has pledged to hire 1,000 new airport staff over the summer, with some of this new staff becoming part of new customer service centers on the East coast. After the merging of its reservations system with that of America West hit snags last month that caused check in delays, the airline plans to enhance its kiosk technology with 600 new state-of-the-art machines set to roll out across the eastern region in late May. In Philadelphia, Charlotte, Boston and Washington DC, US Airways says it will create Passenger Operations Control centers, already in existence at its Phoenix hub, which monitor inbound flight activity to identify passengers, who for whatever reason, may miss connecting flights. Across the board, US Airways is rolling out better meal, snack and alcoholic beverage options, as well as some cabin upgrades to its fleet. CEO Doug Park said the reason for this recommitment is that the airline did not meet its customer's needs in the first quarter of 2007. "We are taking the necessary steps to improve our performance," he said in a statement. "Most of our reliability issues were related to a difficult reservations system migration and that project is now back on track. That issue did highlight some other areas of service improvement opportunity and improving the product offering for some of our most loyal and frequent customers." Visit [www.usairways.com].