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Northwest Airlines

Northwest Airlines • Ticketing snafus • Luggage lost, stolen, destroyed • General hostility • Disgruntled Employees • Northwest vs. KLM • Pray for food --- News • Delta, Northwest Complete Merger • Delta, Northwest Merger Faces Heavy Chop • Troubled Northwest Strikes New Deal With Pilots • A Seething Summer of Discontent for Northwest Airlines • Northwest Passengers Face Uncertain Summer • Pilot Shortages Plague Northwest Passengers • Machinists Pact May Head Off Northwest Airline Strike • Northwest Hopes to Cancel Employee Contracts • Delta, Northwest File for Bankruptcy • Northwest Flying Despite Strike • Northwest Warns Of Bankruptcy • Strike Looms At Northwest • Northwest Seeks Replacement Flight Attendants • Northwest Pushes Up Fares

An icy fossil that survives only because Southwest apparently dislikes cold weather, Northwest is perhaps the most rigid U.S. airline when it comes to making even the slightest accommodation to the customers who keep it in business.

The complaints in this section illustrate how unnecessarily miserable travel can be if one chooses the wrong carrier.

Here are a few of the more recent consumer comments:

R. of Canton GA (08/28/08)
In an attempt to obtain clarification on the baggaged checked policy for reservations made in early June they were absolutely rude and rigidit. I know the rules had changed but I was under the impression there was an exclusion as on Delta for military. So I called and explained to them that my did just signed a contract this summer and went to ROTC training, and as a result had to bring back to college the green duffle bag and all that stuff (uniforms, boots, etc) issued this summer. Asked them were they going to be charged extra. All they kept saying was are they on active duty. I tried to explain that they were on delayed entry until after college is finished. It appears as though I was speaking foreign.

From Previous experience as I told the lady it did not seem to matter if they were on active or not because my kid who is an airforce Captain were charged on another airline that my family will never travel on again because she was not traveling in uniform on the return leg of the trip from Atlanta to Baltimore to Thule Greenland. There seem to be no consistent policy and when you try to get an answer before you get to the airport you get nowhere.

Will probably cancel the ticket and drive my kid back to Univ of Michigan in Ann Arbor as that extra military stuff will cost.

Cheri of Southside, AL August 26, 2008

Cheri of Southside AL (08/26/08)
I bought 3 airline tickets on or about July 22,2008 for a flight on Sept. 8,2008. My husband and I had intended on taking our autistic son to a doctor in Texas. We reliazed two weeks before the trip that we were not going to be able to afford the 290 an hour doctors visit so I called yesterday (exactly 2 weeks in advance) to cancel our flight. They told us the tickets were not refundable and we could fly with them at a later date.

Here's the catch, its a 150 cancellation charge per ticket. So after spending 214 a ticket, they have credited us 64 a ticket. That is unbelievable. That is 450 dollars just handed over to Northwest Airlines. Unbelievable! We are in the process of moving to get our son into an autism school, and they just take away our money like that. I will never fly with Northwest Airlines again and would advise everyone else not to either.

Maryann of Dickson, TN August 25, 2008

Maryann of Dickson TN (08/25/08)
Purchased a ticket from Cheap Tickets to fly Northwest Airlines. The tickets are for 8/30/08 depart to return 9/1/08. On 8/25/08 I found it necessary to change my flight and departure date due to an illness. Come to find out if I change my date I will be charged by the airline 180.00 and then another 50.00 for a fee for Cheap Tickets.

I contacted them 5 days in advance to inquire about the date change. This is just another way to try to cover them to screw people out of money. If you make a reservation for dinner or at a hotel if you cancel with advance notice there isn't a problem. Northwest nor this cheap tickets will ever have to worry about ripping me off again. Ever human being I speak to will hear of these 2 RIP off businesses.

Lori of Lincoln, NE August 24, 2008

Lori of Lincoln NE (08/24/08)
I paid 1,300 for a ticket to London to visit my daughter, whom I had not seen in one year. I left July 2 and was to arrive in London in July 3. My flight connection on Northwest was through Detroit. Our flight to Detroit was re-routed to Cleveland. There were no flights to London from Cleveland for 24 hours. I asked the ticket agent at the gate to re-route me to Paris rather than London, as my daughter and I had purchased tickets from London to a small French town and I would miss the France flight if I could not arrive in London on Thursday. I was told emphatically that I could not be re-routed to a different destination (having landed in Cleveland rather than Detroit).

We were told we were re-routed due to weather, but amazingly, all flights out of Detroit were leaving on time, including my flight to London. I lost one day with my daughter, I lost 410 in airfare to France, which we had to repurchase, I lost one night of loding in France of 156 because I was stuck in Cleveland. I was given a hotel voucher, but no food vouchers, and Northwest refused to pay for my meals while in Cleveland. Had the airline re-routed my flight, I could have purchased a train ticket and met my daughter in FRance. She could have used her ticket, we would have salvaged the prepaid hotel room, etc. Northwest made no efforts whatsoever to accommodate my needs.

I wrote to customer care at Northwest, but there is no customer service at the airline whatsoever. A simple effort to re-route my flight to another destination would have solved my financial troubles. I do not believe there is any reason they could not have re-routed my flight. I was informed by Northwest that this was not their responsibility. I saved for two years to take this trip to visit my daughter and was disappointed and appalled at the level of service provided by Northwest Airlines.

I suffered financial losses that amounted to 560 because we had to re-purchase online airline tickets and paid for a night's lodging that we could not use. We gave up a tour group we were to join on our first day in France, as I was stuck in Cleveland and we were not able to rebook that event.

Doug of Sugar Land, TX August 17, 2008

Doug of Sugar Land TX (08/17/08)
Some time ago my wife and I booked a trip from Houston Intercontinental Airport to Montreal Canada so that I could attend a business meeting and we could do some sight-seeing. Unfortunately, my mother who was in an assisted care facility at the time took a serious turn for the worse. We had to cancel our trip so that I could attend to her needs. We transferred her to hospice care, but she died a short time after that.

When I canceled the airline reservations, I asked for a refund which NWA declined to give me. Rather they gave me a credit for the ticket cost. At the time I did not think to challenge this given the stressful situation I was in and also thinking that we might be able to use the credit later. The long and the short of it was that we did not use the credit either because NWA had no flights to where we were going or the price of the tickets were not competitive.

Consequently, I again asked for a refund. To my surprise, there is alledgedly some time limit during which you can use your own money and my refund was denied. The basis for the denial was that the tickets have no value anymore and therefore I am not entitled to any money for them. I appealed to NWA by pointing out the illogic of this response. If the product I paid for has no value then that is more reason to refund my money and not less. Furthermore, even though the value of the ticket was lost, the value of my dollars was not lost. I might also add that the value of the ticket lost its value the minute the original flight took off. That is, what was lost was the value of the credit, not the value of the ticket.

Now I would not be surprised if there were some statue of limitation in the fine print of the Bill of Carriage. As everyone knows the fine print is the same for all products sold by corporations ie no matter how we mess up, we are not liable. However, what NWA did was out and out stealing. There is no other way to describe it. I do not know whether what they did was legal, but I can tell you with a great deal of conviction that it was unethical.

The amount of money stolen by NWA was just a bit less than 1000.

Joel of Anchorage, AK August 14, 2008

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