Originally Posted by
dvs7310
As happens as often as not, the power plug didn't work for the majority of the flight... I read on this forum that when this happens, typically the purser gives a 25,000 mile voucher that could also be used for $250 off a flight. In my case I brought it up to the flight attendant, but wasn't offered any type of voucher during the flight so I sent it in to TTU expecting something similar from them. NW customer care today sent me an email saying they credited 5,000 Worldperks miles to my account... my status is on CO. Even at that, 5k is what I would expect for issues in coach.
Not to get all zen on your or anything, but your first and greatest mistake is to
expect. Go through life
expecting and you'll be miserable.
But seriously, in our thread on the subject ("
What is lack of power in WBC worth?")
Westward had an
excellent post explaining that pursers aren't
supposed to be handing out those certificates like candy (after all, 25K/$250 is a free domestic round-trip, basically), and mentioning other factors that may come into play.
Like most other airlines out there, NW doesn't have hard-and-fast rules for what will happen under given circumstances. Unlike some other airlines, such as Continental, NW doesn't even have a formalized uber-elite program (like Chairman's Circle). Instead, NW has policies and systems in place that are rather dynamic, backed by a lot of automated information systems and decision-making tools, and not something they talk about. Over the years, we here in the WorldPerks forum have gradually figured out this "black box" as much as we can, and you can read my
general explanation of it from late last year.
As I say in that post, when irregular operations occur, each passenger gets "whatever level of service recovery the system feels is warranted
for them individually, based on what it thinks it'll take to keep them happy/loyal, and what that happiness/loyalty will mean in long-term value."
"The system" knows how much you've flown on NW, how much you've spent on NW, and so on. From that, it can project some amount of future behavior, and make recommendations in terms of how the customer should be handled.
"The system"
does not know about flights on other carriers that aren't credited to NW - so it doesn't know if you fly 500 segments a year on CO, nor does it care... nor
should it.
So in your particular case, the system said "okay, well, this guy's loyalty is clearly with CO, and he has no status with us. We don't stand to gain much by being extra-super-nice to him - he'll keep flying CO. But we'll throw him a bone."
Originally Posted by
dvs7310
I was on the LAX-NRT flight which is only operated by the 744. There are no power outlets in coach on the 744, those are only on the A330 types. A330 to NRT is SFO/PDX/SEA while LAX/MSP/DTW are all 744 only.
Yep, the 330s can't handle the range on NRT to LAX/MSP/DTW.