Flying the unfriendly skies

At one time I was a business flyer. Now retired, I find I only fly to reach holiday travel destinations. Although, I still collect frequent flyer miles, I no longer belong to the “elite” frequent flyer club. So NWA may just ignore my letter.

If I ever ran my business like NWA, I would have been bankrupt, rather than taking an early retirement. After retiring I dabbled as a “secret shopper”, evaluating the business dealings and customer service of various companies. If I were to do an evaluation of NWA, there would be many minuses.

To iterate my experience with NWA:

On Tuesday, July 14^th, 2009, I was booked on NW Flight 27 leaving SFO at 1:35 PM, scheduled to arrive in Shanghai, China at 9:15 PM to meet up with a tour group in Shanghai. The scheduled arrival gave me ample time to get to my hotel, meet the other members of my tour group, and get a good night’s sleep prior to taking off at 7AM the next morning for a 12 day whirlwind tour of China’s capitals. The flight was essentially non-stop with a refuel in Noritz, Tokyo. The flight was scheduled to leave on time--something I was aware of since I had signed up to NWA departure status email service.

Upon landing in Norita, those passengers who were continuing on this flight to Shanghai were told they would have to get off the plane stay the night in Tokyo as the continuation of the flight was cancelled. All this info was being disseminated as we stood in the aisles waiting to deplane. As we deplaned I expected to see a NWA representative at the gate explaining the situation. All we saw was a confused NWA person who spoke no English, telling us we had to go down to arrivals and enter Japan. Most passengers complied, except for 7 of us who wanted an explanation as to what happened and to see if we could make other arrangements to get to Shanghai that evening. We stopped another airline employee—(no indication that they represented NWA). Our group of 7 demanded that we see a NWA supervisor. After repeated calls from this person to request that a supervisor come up to the arrival center to speak with us our requests were ignored for more than ½ hour. Finally, we were told to go down to the departure desk to speak to the supervisor who was waiting for us. By the time we were directed to the supervisor all flights on other airlines had already left or were completely booked and thus we were unable to be rebooked on another flight. I asked the supervisor for his business card and his response was he didn’t have any on him. I then asked to use the phone to call Boston, MA to inform the tour company that I was delayed. At first the supervisor said that we were entitled to a 3-minute call once we reached the Norita Hotel. When asked what happened to our plane, we were told that there was a plane scheduled to come in from Seattle that was cancelled. This didn’t make any sense.

After imploring the supervisor that it was after 1AM in Boston and I didn’t know if I could complete a call in 3 minutes, he finally granted permission to use his phone and I was able to call Boston and hold on for the night person on duty to tell them my dilemma. Later, I was informed that the Shanghai tour director was at the airport in Shanghai and had no notice of the flight being cancelled and spent hours at the Shanghai airport waiting to pick me up. The first indication that the flight was cancelled was from the information I gave the Tour Agency in Boston who was finally able to reach the Shanghai director to inform him that the flight was cancelled until the next day.

So I spent a restless and sleepless night in Norita being told that we would be leaving at 4:40 in the morning from the Norita Hotel for the rescheduled flight scheduled to leave at 6:15 AM. We were given a meal ticket to have an inedible meal at the Norita Hotel.

Upon leaving the hotel in the morning for my flight to Shanghai, I ran into 8 other people on my scheduled tour. One party from Minnesota was informed of the delay prior to flying from Minnesota to SFO to connect with the plane toShanghai. I find this curious as the time is earlier in Minnesota than at SFO and there was no indication at SFO of the flight ending in Norita. He was also informed that the delay was because of the hours put in by the crew on our flight would exceed the permitted flying time and there wasn't another crew to take over in Tokyo.

We left Norita, Tokyo 11 hours and 50 minutes from the original time of our scheduled departure. Something I also find curious, as I know flights delayed more than 12 hours have to compensate passengers.

Well, finally we reached our tour group and rather than having a calm sendoff, we were rushed to catch up with the rest of our group who had already experienced a welcome and good night’s sleep. It took me days to adjust to the hectic pace—something that I was anticipating when I planned to get into Shanghai a day earlier in order to rest.

While in China, I flew two Chinese airlines, one to Xian and another to Beijing. I can’t tell you how efficient the service was along with the modern terminals and planes and crew. The only similar thing to NWA was the airline food.

I returned to San Francisco on July 27^th from Beijing on Flight 008 at 8:55 AM landing in Norita and connecting to Flight 028 from Norita to SFO. I was seated in 36C. The flight schedule went without a hitch, save for the fact that I never drink airline water and usually ask for a can of club soda. On the Norita to SFO leg of the journey, I was awaken by a crew member who offered water and, in my stupor, took the cup and sipped some insipid water and quicklystopped when I overheard one flight attendant say to the other, “Did you see the yellow things in the water?’ “Yech” was the reply as they continued to serve the rest of the cabin. The flight continued and we landed nearly on time and safely at 10AM. I continued home, went to bed and awakened with my stomach in knots. I had just spent 14 days eating Chinese food, drinking bottled water and felt fine. The following day I had a case of Montezuma’s revenge. I’m sure this was because of the water from the plane as the reaction was immediate and lasted for 24 hours, my having consumed no other food or drink except for what I was served on the plane ride. I've written to NWA asking them to investigate if any other traveler on this flight had a similar problem.

I look at China, with its developing infrastructure of its highways, rails and airlines and terminals. This trip was an educational one for me. The analogy I picture is China and the US on escalators. Only China’s escalator is going up as America’s is, sadly, going down. With NWA merger with Delta, I see it joining other American corporations on the way down.