Yes, WP is still down, I tried to get into my account and got a no-go...Interesting!

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/...-flights_x.htm

for NW
I'm glad I'm not flying today.

Well, similar things have happened to CO and DL earlier this year, perhaps it's an alliance thing? Glad the computers are up and running now, though (yet not nwa.com for me).

aloha

Well, I acted like the perfect idiot today. They said be back at the gate at 8:30am. So I grabbed a bagel and found a seat a little ways away from the gate.

I never heard a thing. Maybe I was concentrating on the laptop...maybe the annoucements weren't heard all through the terminal. But when I returned at 8:05am to check progress...the plane was taxiing away!

The good news is that I'm on the noon flight. The bad news is that my roller is still in the overhead of that earlier flight. The only thing somewhat valuable to me is a little London Underground bear I bought for my nephew who's having open heart surgery tomorrow. (he's 2 1/2).

We'll see if the bear makes it. At best, he'll get grabbed in MSP and stuck on my new MSP-MCI flight (1020). At worst, he's appearently going to Disneyland! (flight 584 continues to MCO).

Steve

I'm so glad the TSA changed online checkin from 36 to 24 hours. I feel SO much safer now. I mean, unattended bags are not a risk at all

Does this mean there are going to be a million passenger amenity books floating around now? Time to start watching the coupon connection.

Web site is running fine now.

I was at MSP today around 10:30 AM to pick up sister-in-law. It was crazy to say the least. Flights were delayed 2-3 hrs. Carousel numbers were not showing up for incoming flights and the line at the NWA baggage office was 40-50 deep. The PA lady had to resort to announcing the correct carousels for each arriving flight.

You ain't kidding the site's now working....MY FFF4 MILES POSTED DURING THE DOWNTIME!!! WOOHOO!!!

In a nut shell, here is what happened. An undisclosed building the the MSP area which houses the mainfraim servers lost all power today. All computer systems were down. The crew scheduling systems did not come up untill arround 2:30 cst. I could not access any pard of the mainfraim untill around noon and then it was only small parts. I did not have full accessuntill around 3 pm. Remember several years ago when a fiber optic cable was cut by a road crew and all operations halted? That cable was comming out of this building.

July 14, 2004 - 4:15 p.m. CDT

EAGAN, MINN. - (July 14, 2004) - Northwest Airlines has issued the following statement regarding today's flight operations:

"A Northwest Airlines facility in Eagan, Minnesota experienced an internal power failure this morning at approximately 8:15 a.m. CDT, affecting the use of the airline's computer systems.

The power was restored by approximately 9:00 a.m. CDT and the airline's computer systems are in the process of returning to normal.

As a result, Northwest has delayed or cancelled a number of outbound flights. Flights that had departed or that were en route at the time of the service interruption were not affected.

Departing flights are returning to normal, however, we anticipate flight cancellations and delays until this evening. The airline expects to return to its full flight schedule late today.

Northwest apologizes for this inconvenience to its customers. The airline is allowing customers who were booked to fly on Northwest today on domestic and/or international itineraries to reschedule their flights, without penalty, through Saturday, July 17, 2004. Customers affected by today's operations, click here to view updated reservation information or to confirm an alternate flight.

Information about today's flight schedule is available at nwa.com, or by calling (800) 441-1818."

Northwest Airlines is the world's fifth largest airline with hubs at Detroit, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Memphis, Tokyo, and Amsterdam, and approximately 1,500 daily departures. Northwest and its travel partners serve nearly 750 cities in almost 120 countries on six continents.

We got hit pretty hard by this today.

NWA claims that they were back up by 9am CDT... but this is pure unaldulerated B.S.

We arrived at PDX at 9am CDT and nothing was running. They gave us a pass to go to the gate and hand wrote the luggage tag. On old stock that the manager thought dated back to the Northwest Orient Days.

When we got to the gate they were just able to start printing out boarding passes... but 3 hours later they were still having trouble getting dispatch information so NW could fuel the plane, set a flight plan, etc.

We boarded and got underway way late and we alit from our plane with just 10 minutes before departure for our next leg. We hustled down there and nothing was happening. The flight had not boarded nor was there any hint of what was going on.

I asked the gate agent about our first class seats and he said FC was checked in full. Maybe it was. Apparently they were filling the FC seats with passengers who missed other flights without moving the Plats up front first.

We finally boarded the flight and it was about 1/2 full. This was a good 1/2 hour after posted departure time. We sat there for another 1/2 hour or so while passengers trickled in. And they were simply telling them to take any seat... so coach passengers were sitting down in unfilled FC seats while elites sat in the back.

NW did not have their act together at all today.

To top things off they lost Mrs doglover's bag. 5 hours later there is still no sign of it.

And the agent couldn't even print out the information on the bag tracking because some of the computer systems were still down at 5pm CDT.

I'm not a happy camper with NW right now.

Well, it took 9 hours to get from GSO to Milwaukee. We landed in DTW and they couldn't figure out our gate. It was straight out of the movie "Airplane" . We are arriving at gate 43, 45, 47, ....85. The pilot said at one point" ladies and gentlemen this is just pathetic. There is no reason a computer glitch is keeping us from parking the plane. I am as frustrated as you are". It actually got funny at some point.
The original Milwaukee flight got canceled. I got on standby on the next one. They still had computer problems and had to do weight/fuel calculations by hand.
The silver elite line said " please call later" so I broke down and called the ex ( he's platinum) and got that number. They answered that quickly.
Anyway, I heard that the fiber optics were cut and the back up was cut also. I am not sure if that is the real story but it is what the final pilot of the evening told us.

Well, I guess it's time to get the backup of the backup connection. Maybe even the backup of the backup of the backup connection.