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"We're used to people being mad at us, but we don't like it either," said Reagan desk clerk Brian Ferguson.

US Airways contracts with regional carrier Colgan Air, based in Memphis, Tenn., to operate its express shuttle flights between Charleston and Reagan and Dulles airports.

"Just about every night for the past month, it's been something," US Airways supervisor Patricia Jones told Charleston passengers Monday. "Last night, the plane went out at 10. Other times, the flight is canceled."

Yeager Airport spokesman Brian Belcher said Friday that, for the past three weeks, numerous flights on several airlines were delayed because the airlines' deicing equipment was broken, as were ground power units needed to start the planes.

"We work the GPUs harder in ice and snow," he said.

The airlines repaired that equipment earlier this week, he said.

"Such equipment problems are the responsibility of the airlines, not the airport," he said. But Yeager has bought its own ground power units, he said, so they could be lent to airlines in the future to avoid delays. "And we're thinking about buying a de-icing unit.

"Most of our flights are shuttle flights that fly back and forth between Charleston and a given city," he said. "So when the plane can't go out or is delayed in the morning, it delays its flights for the entire day. We don't want to see that happening any more than necessary."

Belcher said he has no statistics for delays and cancellations at Yeager since each regional airline keeps their own statistics, and "they don't have to give them to us, and our flight information system does not keep stats on delays."