mlsrar

Add NW 460 DTW-PDX 9:19

Vegas Agent

Yep- lack of 757s and the crews to fly them as the disgruntled pilots are not taking extra trips/overtime as anticipated. There should be some people fired at the top ... there will be likely 1000+ cancellations through the rest of the month costing the company millions...so we can operate to BRU and DUS.

Wait, maybe we should just add a few more bucks to Steenland's bonus!
This will be a long summer if things continue as we hear they will...employees are already getting the burn-out and it's only June.

DanTravels

Interesting. Last week it seemed like the cxls were hitting the D9S and 319/320. But sure enough, the cxls from LAX today were 302 and 306 to MSP - both 752s. So Vegas, you're saying this is due to craft being rotated out for TATL retrofitting?

Vegas Agent

The primary reason (probably 95%+ of the cancellations) are crew issues. The official NW statement is that the crews burned all of their duty time during the weather/ATC issues on the east coast earlier this month...in actuality, NW was probably one of the least affected carriers by those issues. So, how are the other airlines (CO, DL, UA, US - all with larger east coast ops than NW) still operating their flights? It has been hinted to us that the crew issues will affect us for several weeks...we can only wait and see, and yes, the cancellations are affecting all domestic aircraft types. We cancelled 2 flights Saturday from LAS, and two have already been cancelled Sunday from LAS...many of the reaccomodations are for the following night...not going to be pretty and not going to do anything positive for the long-term success/customer loyalty for this airline and another major blunder, IMO, by the upper management.

NWAFA

Management took the hard line with employees during the BK. Now they're left scratching their heads trying to figure out what went wrong.

The Pilot's are not doing anything illegal by not working extra flights. It's not a work action. They are just following the contract that NW wanted.

Management still just doesn't get that you have to treat your employees as people.

SchmutzigMSP

This is again veering off-topic. Won't we listen to the warnings by our moderators?

This is not the place for employees to come in and dump on management. It serves little purpose and does nothing but to rile others up.

cdnpilot

You got it & NWAFA loves it!

sbagdon

Noticed my DTW-FLL flights are starting to change from 757s to 320s, specifically around Nov. Then the question becomes... where are all the 320s coming from?

Not picking sides... just noticing a pattern. And as an MR'er... you wanna bump me, just start pulling out the DB-210s...

Steve B.

DanTravels

With the airline freshly out of bankruptcy, and the pilots in arguably a better position than they have been for some time (they got part of the claims, right? and furloughed pilots are being recalled, right?) it seems that whatever they think they're accomplishing here would be a rather pyrrhic victory.

And apparently some of the employees still "don't get" that actions which negatively impact the customers who are the source of the company's money will ultimately result in them all being out of work.

Seriously. If you're pissed about the executive compensation or whatever, make it known in a way that doesn't involve shooting yourselves in the foot, okay?

NWAFA

Nothing else seems to get NW's attention. Besides, the company has relied far to long on it's employee's doing "favors" to get the job done. In the case of the pilot's, NW should have adequate people employeed, they don't. As a result, you're seeing flights canceling everyday.

DanTravels

Understood and accepted; they've still got hundreds furloughed; I know some of those have gotten other jobs and as such aren't going to come back, and obviously they need to recall the rest ASAP.

However, as someone who flew NW a fair bit during the BK, and flew NW 5000 miles at the start of this month just after the BK, it's interesting to me that this has "suddenly" become an issue. Apparently the pilots had been willing to work some OT previously -- which meant that the "inadequate" number of pilots was, practically speaking, adequate -- and now no longer are.

I'm not a fly on the wall and don't know what transpired or what was said between the pilots and management, but I'd be inclined to lay blame based on whether the pilots gave management warning of their newfound unwillingness to work the OT, far enough in advance that it was practical for management to recall more furloughed pilots.

If warning was given and management didn't recall enough, then to the management.

If warning wasn't given, or it was given at extremely short notice, then to the pilots.

Manoa Chris

First, I don't think it is off-topic to discuss the role that flight crew hours is playing in these equipment substitutions. If it's that much worse because of disaffected pilots, I'd certainly like to know.

As for the immediate Portland issue, this happened in part because of a mechancial on a 753 in HNL (that I was on). The original aircraft for NW220 had several problems; the flight was delayed five hours and they had to take the incoming 753 off of the PDX flight, which in turn delayed the flights to Portland by a good seven hours. I got rebooked on the n/s to MSP (very nice of NW considering I was originally connected to B6 in SEA -- Anna Homer at the HNL WorldClub is absolutely amazing), and that 330 turned around to go to PDX.

I'm sure this is mainly a labor issue, but the 753s have seemed overutilized for a while now. Fortunately they seem to be NW's most reliable aircraft, because when one goes down, it seems to cause all sorts of chaos.

NWA_5479

Two words. Summer schedule. What is adequate in March/April is not adequate in June.

davedeboston

Too bad Northwest does not have a pair of DC-10s sitting around at all anymore. I recognize that keeping them around meant yet another different aircraft family to operate with and they drank fuel like there's no tomorrow, but they would really do a number on these seemingly overwhelming summer loads.

I wonder what the economics would have been of running two midday MSP-DTWs, one being a DC-10 and the other one of the planes on the now three flights between 3:00 and 3:30 as previously mentioned.