US Airways says October flight will be its last

DALLAS – The last flight for US Airways will take place this fall, and one more name in airline history will disappear.

The farewell flight for US Airways will be a red-eye – Flight 434 is scheduled to leave San Francisco around 10 p.m. and land in Philadelphia after 6 a.m. Oct. 17. The US Airways website will be turned off. Airport kiosks and signs will change to American Airlines.

The two airlines merged in December 2013 and decided to keep the better-known American name. Vestiges of the carrier will survive for some time, however, as some planes won’t be repainted yet in American’s colors and logo.

In the last 10 years, mergers have eliminated Northwest, Continental and AirTran. Before that, Pan Am, TWA and many smaller carriers disappeared.

American Airlines Group Inc. announced the timing of the curtain call on Friday. The company’s biggest challenge may be combining the computer systems of two airlines without creating the kinds of problems that have plagued United and Continental after they combined reservations systems in 2012. This week, all United flights were grounded and more than 1,000 were delayed after a problem that the airline blamed on a faulty router.

Maya Leibman, American’s chief information officer, said American has built-in redundancies and disaster-recovery programs in key systems. But referring to United, she said, “There is no technology leader that could stand up and say with 100 percent certainty that nothing like this could ever happen to them.”

Customers booked on US Airways flights after Oct. 17 will get a new flight number bearing American’s AA code. That’s only about 4 percent of all reservations in the American and US Airways systems, they said.