<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by IndustrialPatent:
My apologies… I edited out my earlier post. I was unable, and I’m still unable, to find any flight into DTW that was delayed by three hours. NW1236, which is scheduled to arrive from ORD at 8:17AM, shows an ontime arrival every day this week…
I just can’t imagine NW, or any other carrier – including Crapinental – forcing a passenger to endure a 12-hour delay… even on the cheapest tickets, NW is required to endorse your ticket to another carrier. </font>
No problem. My experience was quite unbelievable. I am sure it happens very rarely. Otherwise NW would be out of business in no time.
I was coming to DTW from MSN this time: NW1429 on Mon 3/17 -- I have not checked what the flight status thing says about it. It was supposed to leave at 6:00am Central, but it was about 9am when we took off. The whole time we spent sitting at the end of the runway. It was pretty foggy at MSN too, but other flights were taking off.
I have no idea how difficult it is to predict when fog will clear out, but it is a quite typical phenomenon at certain Midwest airports (DTW too?). So I would think the best solution would have been not board our flight at all in the first place, and start moving pax to other flights out of MSN (e.g. a NW flight to MEM left on time at 6:10am -- don't know if it had open seats though).
As it usually is, the customer service of any company is really put to a test when something goes wrong. The weather was not in NW's control, but it is not an excuse to bad attitude towards any customer, with an elite card or without. It is not very nice to hear after explaining (to a CSR) that my 4-hour travel changed to a 16-hour misery, that "It was caused by the weather. We cannot do anything about it." Maybe they really could not, but some sign of goodwill with an apology would have made me feel a lot better... just a $10 food voucher or something.
I used to live in Europe until about four years ago, so in some sense I am still comparing NW and other U.S. carriers to e.g. Scandinavian Airlines, which I used to fly a lot. Personally I find that the biggest difference over the bond is that all SK agents are really well trained and seem to enjoy their jobs. They seem to be authorized to use their own judgment more too when dealing with problems -- they don't always have to call a supervisor when doing something non-standard. I have got excellent service from e.g. UA staff too, but the variation seems to be bigger here.
The upgrades seem to be a very popular topic here
Thanks to all for your good advice. I will note it and be more proactive getting them next time. Anyhow, it is not that big deal to me that I didn't get them. I bought a coach ticket, so I was expecting to fly in coach.
[This message has been edited by ORD Finn (edited 03-22-2003).]