I was booked on NW for BWI-MSP-DTW-NRT-SIN on 8/20. I almost had a sleepless night on 8/19 concerning about the strike. At 5:30AM, I called NW and got the recorded message that strike was happening but NW was trying to fly full schedule and that my BWI-MSP flight was not affected.

My friend dropped me at BWI around 7:00AM; there was no sign of bad things happenning on NW counters. Check in was smooth and I decided not to check in any luggage.

Once entering the terminal, I saw a long line at gate D2 waiting for rebooking due to BWI-DTW 6:20AM flight was delayed. I was then chatting with the agent working on my flight . She seemd to be confident that everything will be sorted out. Later she made an annoucement that our flight was delayed a little bit due to the fact of crew resting. We pushed back on 9:00AM(5 minutes later than scheduled) and arrived at MSP a few minutes later. However, our gate F7 was still occupied by the previous flight then we waited about 30 minutes at the hanger, which left me a very tight connection time. Fortunately, the flight to DTW departed from F10 thus I did not dash. Obviously, I was the last passenger on board because both agents called my name when seeing me approach the gate.

Once boarding the aircraft, we were notified by the first officer that they were trying to replace a fire extinguisher before we left. This took about 40 minutes before we pushed back.

Upon arriving at DTW, again, our gate was still occupied by the previous flight; we waited about 15 minutes before the previous was removed. However, that aircraft stopped moving just after pushing back for unknown reason. We then got a new gate at A74.

When I left the plane, the time was already 3:20PM; I made a dash to A30 for my 3:30PM DTW-NRT flight. They were just ready to close the door when I got there; however, funny thing happened because the machine did not read my BP. Two of the four gate agents were confused because they could not see my name on this flight but I did have a BP for this flight. Finally a Japanese gate agent sorted things out and printed me a new BP (36C instead of 21C which was printed on the BP I got from BWI). Could anybody explain what is happening? (I was originally booked on a direct flight NW5 DTW-NRT-SIN; but later they changed it to NW11 DTW-NRT, NW5 NRT-SIN. This is the only reason I could think about). I was one of the last two passengers boarding this flight. My decision about bringing all my luggage with me proved to be smart at this moment. Flight was smooth to NRT. Upon arriving at NRT, I noticed that PDX, SEA and MSP flights were delayed mildly but JFK flight was delayed by more than 3 hours. My connection flight to SIN was very smooth and we arrived at SIN around 12:39AM.

One word----Not a bad job, NW!