A NW employee (gate agent at MEM) told me on Tuesday that they would be retiring the last of their 727’s by year’s end. With that said, there is absolutely no reason for NW to allow their aircraft to fall apart before customer’s eyes…
Personally, I don’t mind flying on an “old” NW DC-9. Many Boeing engineers have told me that the DC-9 is one of the most “over-engineered” aircraft flying today. When Douglas put the original plans together; they made one sturdy bird. As for the customer experience, NW has added new interiors to most of the DC-9’s in the fleet. No complaints here…
If you don’t like NW, don’t fly them. If you don’t like them, but fly them anyway, don’t complain…you asked for it.
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"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
--Vice President Al Gore