US Airways' Christmas travel fiasco was bad enough to rank the airline among the industry's worst in mishandled bags, customer complaints and on-time performance in December, according to a report released yesterday by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

	US Airways Watch US Airways, after pulling 313 local flights in four years, plans to add 11 daily flights this month at Pittsburgh International Airport as part of schedule changes being made across its system. Total daily departures will rise to 239, according to a company spokeswoman. It is adding new flights to Knoxville, Tenn., and Cincinnati, and increasing frequency of flights to Toronto; Hartford, Conn.; Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, N.Y.; Fort Lauderdale and Fort Myers, Fla.; Charlotte, N.C.; and Richmond, Va. It is decreasing frequency of flights to Charleston, W.Va.; Manchester, N.H.; Chicago; and White Plains, N.Y. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Stephen Mitchell approved an agreement yesterday allowing US Airways to end an obligation to buy 35 planes from European jet manufacturer Airbus, and delays for a year the delivery of 30 other Airbus planes. The orders were made in the late 1990s. Passenger traffic at Pittsburgh International fell 7 percent in 2004, a result of cutbacks by US Airways and the loss of hub status in November. For the year, US Airways traffic declined 12.6 percent. The good news was that traffic by other airlines rose 18.7 percent for the year. Overall traffic dropped 27.1 percent in December, a likely result of the US Airways hub loss. -- Dan Fitzpatrick and Mark Belko

For the month of December, US Airways was:

Third-worst out of 19 carriers in number of mishandled bags, with 17.1 reports per 1,000 passengers, up from 3.97 per 1,000 a year ago.

Second-worst in consumer complaints, with 4.04 per 100,000 boardings, compared with 0.54 per 100,000 a year ago. Most of the complaints were about lost baggage.

Fifth-worst in on-time arrivals, at 68.6 percent.

For the full year, US Airways was the worst carrier for consumer complaints, 13th out of 19 in mishandled baggage reports and seventh in on-time arrivals.

The airline's financial problems, which resulted in a Sept. 12 bankruptcy filing, contributed to the poor performance, along with low employee morale and ongoing operational issues at the delay-prone Philadelphia International Airport.

Everything came to head over Christmas weekend, when a combination of bad weather and employee shortages forced US Airways to delay hundreds of flights and misplace more than 10,000 bags, ruining the holiday for countless travelers.

Despite the meltdown, there was evidence yesterday that US Airways mitigated the damage from the Christmas debacle.

In January, traffic at US Airways was up 3.9 percent and its planes were 68.3 percent full on average, the highest "load factor" for any January in the company's history and well above its performance of a year ago.

But as the airline cuts fares to keep passengers, its sales are lagging. Revenue generated by flying one seat one mile dropped between 6 percent and 7 percent in January, yet another sign that the price war spreading through the airline industry is costing US Airways money as it tries to compete with discount carriers and emerge from its second bankruptcy in two years.

The airline announced this week that it lost $236 million in the fourth quarter and $611 million for all of 2004, due largely to the proliferation of cheap fares and high fuel prices.