Last call at US Airways reservations center
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Near the entrance to US Airways' Green Tree reservations center sits a small collection of plastic Hawaiian leis and a handmade sign urging departing employees to wear one "so everybody can wish you a farewell."
Pam Panchak, Post-GazetteLois Smith, Nina Palladini and Diane Tondo will take their last calls today at the US Airways Green Tree reservations center.
Click photo for larger image.
Today, however, there may not be enough to go around.
After four decades of taking calls and booking tickets for US Airways passengers, the airline's last 281 Pittsburgh-based reservation agents and managers will hang up their headsets and leave the fifth floor of a gray, boxy suburban office building for the last time. Their final shift will end at 6 p.m., and a farewell party will follow at a local Holiday Inn.
Their departure, sure to be emotional and tinged with sadness, marks yet another end to the once-proud US Airways network in the Pittsburgh area. In the last four years, the Arlington, Va.-based carrier has cut more than 9,000 jobs, pulled hundreds of flights and stripped Pittsburgh of its hub status. After today, 3,500 US Airways employees will remain in Pittsburgh.
In the early days -- when the carrier was known as Allegheny Airlines and then USAir -- much of US Airways' traffic funneled through Pittsburgh, the largest hub in the airline's system and the site of many airline support operations, including reservations. The center started on the second floor of an old airport hangar, where bookings were taken down on index cards and passed along to sorters via a conveyer belt. It moved to the more automated Green Tree location in August 1970.
Longtime reservations employees still remember what it was like in the 1970s and 1980s -- when US Airways was profitable and fun. They recall fondly the parties, the company gifts, the friendly relationship with management and the start of lifelong friendships at work.
With the carrier in its second bankruptcy and attempting to merge with Tempe, Ariz.-based America West Airlines, the mood in the Green Tree office is dark. Commemorative US Airways posters have been torn off the walls, US Airways-branded staplers have been taken and many of the seats once filled with friends have been emptied.
First Published July 29, 2005 12:00 am
