After three hours of sitting on a runway at LaGuardia International Airport the night of June 19, and the single glass of water and the mini granola bar issued to her long gone, Alice Norris got off her US Airways flight to look for another plane back to Pittsburgh. None was available. She returned to her seat and sat for another two hours before the pilots announced the federal limit on their flight time had run out and the flight had been canceled.

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It was now around midnight. The Butler County woman waited through the crowded customer service line, saying she was an inexperienced flier and didn't know what to do. The customer representative shrugged.

"I'm tired," Mrs. Norris said.

"I am too," the rep replied.

"I'm 70," Mrs. Norris said.

Such experiences are becoming more and more common this summer, with passengers facing mounting cancellations, delays, lost bags, ruined vacations and emotional scenes at the ticket counter. A product of dangerous summer weather and systemic industry problems, the situation is poised to get even worse as the traveling season gets into full swing this week.

Passengers are finding the trade-offs offered for canceled flights -- such as hotel rooms -- are not as readily offered anymore, and when they are, rooms are sold out. Free ticket offers aren't as desirable either -- why come back to the airport and face a delayed flight again?

That night, while walking around the darkened terminal, Mrs. Norris joined another increasingly common sight at American airports: a group of strangers huddled together for the night. Finding she couldn't sleep, she returned to another crowded ticket line after 5 a.m., was erased from a 9 a.m. flight before finally finding another close to 11 a.m., all the while thinking of her treatment.

"I don't blame US Airways. It wasn't that," she said last week. "They should at least instruct employees to fake sincerity, or fake compassion. This girl gave me nothing."

Debbie Chaklos of the South Side booked a four-day Father's Day trip to Paris with her father and 17-year-old brother for June 13. Due to bad weather elsewhere, they were still on the tarmac in Pittsburgh when their flight from Philadelphia to Paris took off. No other flights were leaving that night. After failing to get their bags back, Ms. Chaklos said, she called some 25 Philadelphia-area hotels before finding a vacancy.

A US Airways attendant re-booked them on an Air France flight the next day, but, on getting to Paris, they found their three bags were missing. They spent days haggling on the phone with Air France and washing their clothes in the sink before two of the bags finally arrived -- 10 hours before the trio was set to fly back to the States. Once back, they realized the bags were lost again.

"Our pictures from the trip make us laugh now because it looks like we did everything in Paris in one day. ... We're always in the same clothes," Ms. Chaklos e-mailed last week.

Savvy, hard-core business travelers such as Aveek Datta get stuck too. Two weekends ago, seeing weather problems popping up for his American Airlines flight home to Pittsburgh from LaGuardia, Mr. Datta booked a US Airways flight on the last departure of the night and tried to book a backup on American as well. All were soon canceled or pushed back until late the next day.

All nearby hotels proved booked, and Mr. Datta figured trips into Manhattan and back to stay the night would take another two hours of his time. So he canceled his flights and drove a rental car seven hours back to his home in McDonald.

Another experienced business traveler, Manu Maganti, found his Sunday, June 17 direct US Airways flight to San Francisco for a Monday business meeting canceled because no flight crew was available. The airline told him he could not get another flight until Monday night -- after his meeting was over.

US Airways offered to refund the Dormont man for the outbound trip, and he found another flight to San Francisco on JetBlue. After the meeting he discovered US Airways had canceled his return trip to Pittsburgh -- because he had not taken the outbound flight. "How the hell could I take my outbound flight when it was canceled? I had to fly on another airline," he said in email last week.

Local railroad executive Henry Posner III of Oakland had three "planes, trains and automobiles" trips ruined in June alone, in which he was forced to use buses, subways and rental cars in order to get home. One trip from Pittsburgh to Newark took 25 hours. After all flights to Newark and Philadelphia were canceled, he decided to drive instead -- only to run out of gas, then have his car break down, then go to the Reading, Pa., airport to rent a car.

"What's ironic is, with all the concerns about security and safety, the fact is people are being motivated to drive, which is substantially more unsafe than flying," said Mr. Posner.

A lack of flexibility

June was a bad month for the airline business. Last week, Northwest Airlines canceled hundreds of flights due to labor woes and pilot shortages. Two weeks ago, a computer mistake crippled United Airlines service for a day.

Thunderstorms Wednesday and Thursday sent ripples of delays across the eastern half of the United States, canceling flights from Dallas to Boston. (Pittsburgh International Airport's performance was not bad, according to data from FlightStats.com, with just a handful of canceled flights each day this week -- the problem was with connecting flights from other cities.)

Even during perfect weather and no labor unrest, the airline system is strained -- perhaps irrevocably broken.

The post-9/11 crash over, passengers have returned to the air, demanding low fares, at the same time airlines have cut tens of thousands of employees and aircraft, and the air-traffic control system has become ever more overloaded. As noted in an April report by the Aviation Institute at the University of Nebraska and Wichita State University, the delays, cancellations, lost bags and other complaints are a rather simple result.

"The explanation isn't exotic. Look at these load factors, they're at all-time highs," said local airline analyst Bill Lauer, referring to the high percentage of occupied seats on each flight.

"Load factors are a direct consequence of less equipment and less capacity than historically had been the case on all of these routes. With less capacity and with higher load factors, the sensitivity to any sort of delay -- whether weather induced or an equipment issue -- is much greater.

"With proportionally greater numbers of stranded passengers, the capability of an already extended system to handle them is less," Mr. Lauer said. "There's simply less flexibility in the whole thing."

Airlines "are at the breaking point, doing more with less," said Meara McLaughlin of FlightStats.com, a leading Web site for tracking delayed and canceled flights.

Reaching the limit

Another pressure point during summer travel is the crew shortages that typically hit at the end of each month, when pilots reach the monthly federal limits on flying time. While no air traveler should ever want a tired pilot to fly them, the rules are still a pain at the end of a long day.

Colleen Stulak of North Huntington, an educational consultant who flies frequently, booked a routine trip last summer from LaGuardia to Columbus for her daughter's wedding shower, flying out of New York at 3 p.m. Takeoff was pushed back repeatedly, before finally being set at 9 p.m. Passengers were rushed onto the US Airways flight, only to be told the pilots had timed out.

She arrived in Columbus the next day, via Pittsburgh, 90 minutes before the shower, after spending the night in the terminal. "Did you know those pre-recorded announcements are played all night in the airport?" she wrote last week.

Two weeks ago, Rich Mountjoy, formerly of Robinson, was flying from Detroit to Newark when East Coast weather caused a delay in his Northwest Airlines flight. It finally took off, before going into a holding pattern over Eastern Pennsylvania and stopping in Harrisburg due to low fuel.

The refueling took a while, but the passengers were told they would take off again soon -- before the captain announced the crew had timed-out, canceling the flight. Mr. Mountjoy rented a car for the two-plus hour drive to New Jersey, retrieving his bags at 1 a.m.

On Wednesday, Bob Pietrandrea of Wexford was on American Airlines, returning on a business trip from Guatemala City, connecting in Miami to Pittsburgh. There were delays getting out and he arrived in Miami at 12:05 p.m. for his 12:45 link home.

Mr. Pietrandrea -- who works with Mr. Posner at Railroad Development Corp. and has 30 years in the transportation business -- knew there was little hope of getting there on time, especially on an international flight.

"I ran through immigration and got through. I ran through customs and got through and sailed through security," he said, reaching his gate 20 minutes before departure. He had his boarding pass and American knew he was supposed to connect, but the passenger bus to his flight had left.

"Oh, we never thought you'd make it through customs and immigration on time," the attendant told him.

Mr. Pietrandrea hopped another bus to the plane, but the doors were shut and the stairs rolled away -- the pilot was trying to get in line for an early takeoff. Pietrandrea had an important appointment Thursday morning and finally got home at 10 p.m. Wednesday, through Raleigh-Durham.

"I had a stress test scheduled," he said that afternoon. "If this didn't blow a valve, I don't know what will. I can't remember last time I was this mad."