When is an airport code not an airport code? EWR?
 

Tonight I typed in EWR for a flight at nwa.com, and it comes back with a "we need you to clarify your departure location..." error. My choices:

Newark (All Locations), NJ (EWR)
Newark Liberty International, NJ (EWR)

What the heck is up with that? I'm used to AA.com asking me to clarify my "NYC" queries (giving me a choice of NYC/EWR/JFK/LGA) and I'm used to Delta.com being obnoxious and refusing to let me search for NYC altogether (making me specify one of EWR/JFK/LGA).

But why does nwa.com now get confused by EWR? I've never seen this before.

Now I agree that what you report is crazy, but my first thought is "Are NW now code-sharing on the Amtrak service that CO has connecting with flights at Newark?" If so, EWR would be both an airport and a train station designator.....Weirder things have happened.....

I thought only I was crazy when that came up!

I don't understand why NW makes such a nonsense.

For example when search PVG it gives

Shanghai, ALL LOCATIONS (PVG)
Shanghai Pudong (PVG)

Total nonsense.

I sent an email to nwa.com and wait for response.

Wild stab...

NW IT loaded their locations database again with an updated version which should have gone in and changed all the existing entries to the new ones. However, the search & destroy failed and we now have two entries for some airport IATA codes (EWR/PVG as examples). Whenever you have a duplicate entry (i.e. more than one record returned), NW has to give you the list of possible matches.

My guess is that this will be here for awhile until they can manually update their database properly.

Just a shot in the dark.

-RM

Still Not Fixed......
 

Incredible. And incredibly annoying.

SunLover

They have not fixed it!!!!
 

Really annoying.

More than 30 days ago, I sent NW an email complaining about this.

Original Message Follows:
-------------------------

There are two airports in Shanghai, China: SHA and PVG. NW only serves PVG. In fact, no international flight goes to SHA anymore.

However, even if I type PVG, nwa.com still pop up a page ask me to identify: Pudong (PVG) or all locations (PVG). This is new. Until this week, I didn't have to do it.

It is totally unnecessary and ridiculous to go through the procedure to pick PVG from two PVGs. It is very annoying when you have to repeatedly do this when searching fares or award availability for 10 different departure dates.
Why not just put PVG and SHA back as before? It is simple.

==============================================

I got the following response:

Dear XXXXXX,

Thank you for contacting nwa.com Customer Service.

I appreciate you making us aware of the issue you have experienced with the airport code PVG. I have reported this to our Website Development Team so they can look into this matter further. The issue number is 173159. I trust that by submitting this issue I will be able to obtain clarification on why this change occurred in the last week. I will be in contact with you via E-mail once I hear back.

Your feedback is important to us. We would appreciate your opinion in a customer experience survey where your responses will be kept confidential. To participate in the survey please visit http://nwa.com/survey/2004

Thank you for providing feedback which will help us improve the service
we provide for all of our customers.

Sincerely,

Melissa Jones
nwa.com Customer Service

================================================== =

As of today, this annoying problem remains!!! :mad: :mad: :mad:

SHA is the city code for Shanghai. Just search for SHA instead of PVG. Since NW only flies to PVG, nwa.com will only pull up PVG flights.
Not that searching for PVG should cause the website to make you specify "which PVG", but searching for SHA avoids this.