Plane and Pax Switcharoo in MSP
 

So I've heard of planes being switched for flights last minute (equipment change). Well how about this, was flying MSP-MKE on the last flight of the day 562. I board with F around 10pm, handful of Y pax join us.

For the next 10 min no pax board, we on board start to get nervous. GA comes to the plane door and announces NWA Ops is changing gates from C12 to F9. Great.

We deplane, head to the F terminal. Funny, about a planeful of pax are heading our direction. 1045ish boarding starts at F9. Entire plane boards. ~1100pm all pax are boarded, excuse to equipment switch is given (more on this later). We are told mechanical is coming to do a "quick signoff" on some things inside the airplane, "nothing major." Mechanical comes, and surprise, they need another 20 min to fully "inspect" the plane. 1130, pilot announces inspection is complete. 1145, finally the plane pulls back from gate.

Excuse given is that there are two versions of the A320, one has more "thrust" than the other. Since the pax on the plane we eventually rode were going to SAN, they needed more thrust. Wasn't told why, they just did. Make up time in the air? Apparently we were the only other "available" A320.

Pilot also told us that the SAN pax were already delayed. I think the excuse was a bunch of BS, my guess is that NWA ops didn't want to delay the SAN pax further and switched our plane with theirs.

Thoughts?

Sounds like it could be partially viable as an excuse. The general west-east headwinds could be the reason, but more importantly, SAN has airport curfew. As a near to the airport resident, we get a quarterly newsletter from the SAN Airport Commission and they like to tout the fines they imposed in the last quarter for airlines violating curfew, and there are no free passes. Also, too many violations (I think 3 in one quarter) can result in possible revocation of landing rights. Likely a very extreme punishment that they wouldn't carry out but the threat is there.
It was probably boiling down to flying faster and hoping for favorable routing to beat curfew or cancel the SAN flight until the morning which probably meant more $$$ out of NW's pockets than even the fine at SAN.

There are two standard engines on the A320 & both have various subtypes with varying thrust ratings.

Possibly the flight to SAN was heavier (fuel, pax) and needed the higher thrust engines for takeoff.

I think all of Northwest's A320s have the same CFM56 engines. Are some rated differently due to age or something? Obviously quite different needs between the ~300 miles to MKE vs ~1500 to SAN. I wonder if one was fueled up and the other not.

Very strange

NWs A320s (and 319s) do use CFM56 engines (there are many many different CFM models and subtypes e.g. www.cfm56.com), however from what I recall, there were some earlier A320s that had lower thrust versions of the CFM56 model used by NW on the A320s. I might be mistaken, however I thought NW had retired or let lease expire on some of the older models that had the lower thrust engines, or, they were slated to be retired thus leaving a few in the fleet. - H

Could this have something to do with the difference between an A320 and an A320SR?

You may be on to something. According to this post at a.net:
Note the small differences in engine types.

According to Wikipedia, there can be differences in thrust between engines in the same series:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFM_Int...FM56-5A_series

And finally, it seems NW made a large engine order of the higher-rated engines back in '96, so some could have more powerful engines than others:

http://www.cfm56.com/press/news/nort...5a3+engines/39

Well either way, it was interesting call by NWA ops. Resulted in two planes of frustrated pax. I guess it comes with travelling.

There can be little doubt that this switcheroo was indeed due to the SAN curfew and the desire by Ops to avoid the fine (previously mentioned).

This, of course, is another subtle but significant way that airlines transfer operational risk to pax. Why bother biting the bullet, taking your financial lumps for poor ops? Just pull the equipment switcheroo. Heck, it's only pax, it's only 2 hours, they don't count. They've already paid their $$. Just delay them at will. Yeah, that'll work.

What a country.

Indeed, the carrier actually got the passengers to their destinations safe, delayed, yet safe plus the passengers had a choice of who and when to fly and with those choices, how much to pay (more for direct with a stop), less for more stops and chances for misconnects, what a country indeed. ^

-H

Indeed. Let's play - blame the pax! Of course it's the pax fault that this happened! They made their choice, after all...paid their $$, then got to the airport fully EXPECTING to arrive safe and on time for their chosen $$ amount, and they got 2 out of 3. That's good in baseball, not so good in travel.

Meanwhile, the airline flew safe, banked the $$ (no $$ penalty for being delayed, after all) and delayed the pax on purpose. They got the trifecta. No loss of $$ and transfer of all their risk to the pax, who received no compensation for that risk. Brilliant!

Wow :eek:

Don't forget the empty "we apologize" lots of times.

+1

All those choices for the pax took place before the night in question. However, during the night in question it was NW, not the pax, that had two choices:

1. We can send one plane out on time, and send another plane out with a delay and possibly incur a fine at their destination for a noise violation.
2. We can send both planes out delayed, in an attempt to avoid the noise violation.

I'm not sure what your point is about n/s and misconnects. That had nothing to do with this situation. Who knows if anyone on either plane was connecting or not, and it wouldn't matter. And why credit for flying pax safely? Isn't that our standard, our baseline? Are we expecting every flight to be unsafe and therefore we should be thrilled and compliment the airline for getting us there safe? Safe is part of their job, and I don't think people need extra credit for just doing their job. Do you thank NW with a ^ every time they manage to not lose your checked luggage? How about every time you manage to actually get on board rather than receive an IDB... ^ ?

The OP has subsidized NW's screw up with his lost time.

Are you really all THAT inflexible? The airline understands you buy a ticket for ontime, safe transport. But come on... you all are road warriors! Think outside the box and be flexible. It's incredible to me that you're all surprised glitches happen and complain about it as if it's general practice to attempt to screw the passenger. There are a million decisions that take place to launch one single flight. Sometimes it really isn't all about the customer. While the customer is truly an important variable, there are many other pieces to the puzzle.