When your flight is delayed/cancelled...
 

...the first thing I recommend doing is calling the Elite line ASAP.

I was at GSO yesterday to board my flight to DTW which was delayed and then cancelled. The delay would have missed the connection with the last DTW-MKE flight (and NW unwisely eliminated the late DTW-MKE flight some time ago).

Having been alerted to the delay by automated calls to my cell phone from NW, I called and was able to snag the last seat on a Beaver Jet from GSO to MEM and an exit row seat on the last MEM to MKE. Yes, I lost my upgrades, but I got home last night, about 45 minutes later than originally planned.

When I did get up to the counter to get my boarding pass, the agent mentioned that I would have to wait until this morning to leave GSO and I told her no, that I rebooked and all she needed to do was print out boarding passes. She seemed a little miffed at that (for reasons I don't know) but such is life.

Yup, I'd agree. Had a JFK-MSP flight cancel in May - the last flight of the day. All the evening flights from EWR/LGA/JFK were cancelled due to thunderstorms. Instead of waiting for the gate agents or CSR's at check-in to change my itinerary, I immediately called the elite line and got them to change my reservation.

It saves a lot of time and hassle.

-RM

Thanks for the heads up
 

Thanks for posting this information Dick Ginkowski

right on targe
 

Dick: You are so right. I did this last year after being deverted from my original distanation. Got back to DTW, went to the WC and they printed out my new boarding pass while everyone else on my flight was waiting in line to get new flight arrangements.

I have WP Elite desk # programed on my cell phone. Already as paid off once this year. ^

Agreed completely - before I came a real NW Silver Elite (i.e. flew 27K last year, purely leisure), I had the trial SE that CO was offering to anyone with a pulse. I did a trip from PDX-EWR-DCA & because of weather, we got rerouted to SYR & sat on the tarmac for literally 5 hours (and I got to sit next to Vincent D'Onofrio in F, but that's another story!). Obviously, we had missed the flight from EWR-DCA & I just called CO's elite line from my cell on the plane & had them rebook me & 7 other traveling companions on the first flight of the day from EWR-DCA, no charge.

When I finally got to EWR that night, there was literally thousands of people in line, really pissed off, trying to rebook their flights and very few CSR to handle them all - it was like people left at the end of their shift for the day & didn't care for the customer enough to work OT to make people happy - I'm so glad I didn't wait in that line. Instead, I just called the EWR Courtyard shuttle & got a great nights sleep & was refreshed for our morningg flight. The next morning, our flight was overbooked by about 3 people because of the night before's delay & we had a total of 8 confirmed seats, even though we were placed on the flight the night before - I'm assuming the elite status helped open up those seats for all 8 of us.

I'd agree too. Entire set of flights canceled in December from New York's Laguardia, got automatically rebooked to the first flight the following day. After enjoying a wonderful evening sleeping on the chairs in LGA, got to sleep some more on the plane for a few hours while the plane was deicing. Landed at MSP a few hours late, but I called as soon as we touched down, got rebooked, put in FC (back then, agents could do that for you!), and still managed to get the SRP with my other "automatically rebooked" ticket (in Y)

The Elite Line is invaluable when cancelation occurs
 

I have had several instances when the elite line rebooked me on an alternate routing which avoid overnight delays.

You should utilize the elite line to avoid getting stuck.

RC

Also programmed into mine.

Web Site
 

Supposedly NW has a service recovery programm on their web site, that I imagine, allows rebooking without fees or aadditional fare when their are cancellations. Has anyone tried this? How does it work? Will it book you in Y no matter what your fare code?